Rusting anchor: The creation & mutation of a national ideology

Son

We just came through a rather bruising election. I was supporting Nicola Sturgeon heavily. For couple of reasons. First I firmly believe that people have the right to craft out their own identity. Form their groups. And that's why I strongly support them. Second is that the country is too centralised in Westminster and it requires this kind of a shakeup to really focus minds on what exactly is the United Kingdom for?

It was very instructive during the Scottish referendum as to what the Scots were saying they wanted. They actually wanted to pretty much everything to remain the same. Queen. Taxation. History. BBC. Education. Ideology. International membership. But they wanted to be ruled by themselves.

But there is a problem with this Scottish nationalism. It's defined as opposed to Westminster. Not so much as what's Scottish. See above. There is no difference son. So ultimately when push comes to shove, there is no hard core reason to separate. Think about Wales or Northern Ireland. Same with Pakistan below. It keeps on having existential debates.

Every country which bases itself on religion first of all is run by idiots. Frankly morons. Secondly they are incoherent. And finally religion is a hugely pathetic way of organising a modern country which is why most religiously oriented countries like Israel, most Muslim countries keep on having functions. There's academic research backing this up as well. The Buddhist nations also learnt it the hard way.

Anyway one to read. Also read Seymour Hersh's report on Osama's death in the London review of books published yesterday. It's shocking to read the way the Americans and Pakistanis went about this. This will have long term repercussions. Not good.

Love

Baba

Rusting anchor: The creation & mutation of a national ideology
http://www.dawn.com/news/1160202
(via Instapaper)

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For decades certain sections of the Pakistani intelligentsia have been insisting on the importance of changing the country’s national narrative (to better fight the social aspects of Pakistan’s war against religious extremism).

They are correct in suggesting that the more militant ogres now at war with the state of Pakistan are armed expressions and projections of a rather myopic national narrative.

This narrative, to them, is the result of whatever that was concocted in the name of a national ideology many years ago and then proliferated through school text books and the state-owned media until it began to inform the political, constitutional and social mind-set of the Pakistani polity as a whole.

Today, it is largely being blamed for popularising a peculiar idea of nationhood engineered through the state’s many experiments that seeded a non-organic ideology - a dogma that has contributed the most in whatever that has gone down in this country in terms of faith-based violence and the ever-increasing episodes of bigotry.

So what was this idea? And why today even the military and political establishments of the country are finally looking to tweak it, if not outright replace it?

The paradox

Pakistan had come into being in 1947 on the back of what its founders called the Two Nation Theory.

The Theory was culled from the 19th Century writings of modernist Muslim reformers in India who, after the collapse of the Muslim Empire in South Asia, began to explain the region’s Muslims as a separate political and cultural entity (especially compared to the Hindu majority of India).

This scholarly nuance gradually evolved into becoming a pursuit to prepare a well-educated and resourceful Muslim middle-class in the region.

Eventually, with the help from sections of the Muslim landed elite in India, the emerging Muslim middle-classes turned the idea into a movement for a separate Muslim homeland in South Asia comprised of those areas where the Muslims were in a majority.

This is what we today understand to be the Pakistan Movement.

Florence, 1100-1532, What a Republic!

Kannu Choti

Florence is one of the cities that I'm desperate to visit. It's high on my list. Along with Venice. It's an extraordinary cornucopia of artistic riches. And has a history that is literally breathtaking. 

We have read so much about Florence and it's grandeur that it's unbelievable that one city can actually absorb so much brilliance. And not just one or two people kids but it had people who were from all walks of life and all areas of human endeavour. 

The below mentioned example of Florence's political development is brilliant. We are citizens of a liberal democracy with a constitutional monarchy sitting over the elected members, judiciary and executive. Yes people quibble about which model is good, like the American one or the French one but the weight of history is something to consider. Very important. 

Fascinating background to Florence. We will go there soon :) 

Love

Baba

Mike Anderson's Ancient History Blog: Florence, 1100-1532, What a Republic!
http://www.mikeanderson.biz/2014/02/florence-1100-1532-what-republic.html

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Florence, in this blog? I thought this was supposed to be ancient history! Yes, but sometimes we can find value when we compare political systems from different times in history. The Republic of Florence an interesting case to compare to Republican Rome, because it gives us another example of how men try to build stable governments. Florence was a city republic like Rome but it was never able to expand in the same way because of the circumstances of its time. Still, its leaders faced the same challenges the Romans did – socio-economic class differences, economic interests, and cultural influences. In my last post I mentioned that those designing Republics, including America’s founding fathers, went to great lengths to insure their infant political systems would not revert to monarchies through the consolidation of power. Florence stands as an extreme case of this paranoia.

As one of the great merchant cities of the middle ages (Pisa or Antwerp would be other examples), Florence escaped participation in the feudal system because it had a strong capitalist engine and could operate as an independent political system. Feudalism could only take root where bureaucracy failed and it did not fail there. The Florentine political system certainly had its ups and downs, but it was business that moved Florence forward and politics were regulated by business.

By the year 900 A.D, the great cities of Europe had been weakened to a point where it was necessary to start from scratch. Commerce and artisanship had to be rekindled by recruiting citizens with the right skills from the outside, mostly from the agrarian economies of the surrounding territory. Florence always found aristocratic control unacceptable, so any tendency in that direction was continually resisted. Its leaders were a new class of man; middle class merchants we call burghers, who were independent, entrepreneurial, and confident. Between the years of 900 and 1250, these burghers turned Florence into an autonomous institution by resisting and expelling those who would attempt to impose on them some kind of hierarchical model of government. They were aided in this effort by the emperors and popes who wasted time and money fighting among themselves for control of Italy rather than attacking the city.

Conditions of nationality

This bewildered me. I quote:

They need to have iqamas (residence permits) and obtain exit-reentry visas every time they want to leave the country.

Under the citizenship rules and regulations, children born to Saudi women with foreign husbands are not automatically entitled to Saudi passports at birth.

Boys can, however, apply to obtain the nationality when they are 18, while girls can only get it if they marry Saudi men.

The boys should be born in the Kingdom and lived here until they are 16 years of age. Saudi men married to foreign women do not face such a problem. Their children are automatically entitled to citizenship at birth.

Children born to Saudi women and foreign fathers need sponsorship.

Al-Sharif said many Saudi mothers register their sons and daughters under their sponsorship as drivers and housemaids regardless of their education in order to save them from deportation.

“These particular job titles will prevent their sons and daughters from getting proper jobs and prevent the mother from recruiting a driver or a housemaid from outside,” he added.

“These children feel humiliated in their motherland, the very place they were born in.”

Al-Sharif said that if the mother was able to register her children as companions to her, they would not be granted work permits regardless of their financial needs.

Al-Sharif said the husband would not have declared in his iqama that he is married to a Saudi, while the wife will not have made the same declaration in her civil records. “They have to have their marriage contract with them always to prove that they are husband and wife,” he said.

He also noted that daughters from such marriages are given cards when they are 18 years old stating that they should be treated like Saudi citizens, but added this would not allow them to work.

He also noted that foreign husbands would not be given any preferential treatment when they apply for Saudi nationality, no matter how long he remains married.

Al-Sharif said Saudi men who marry foreign women without permission from the authorities concerned have a different kind of problem. “They find great difficulties in documenting their marriage contracts or getting their wives and children into the Kingdom,” he said.

Al-Sahrif said children born to Saudi mothers and foreign fathers also have problems in obtaining free medical treatment in government hospitals.

He said the society has come across cases in which children from such marriages were not allowed to obtain their mothers’ pensions or social security assistance.

He claimed that children born to Saudi women and Palestinian men are not even allowed to apply for Saudi citizenship.

Simply bewildering why this kind of gender based discrimination would occur at this day and age. At one point, the UK also treated women differently from men but thankfully this has been resolved now. For example, if a British woman married a foreign man, her British citizenship would be lost but not so if you were a British Man marrying a foreign woman. There are still gender based differences, see here for example.

View of the world from a 13 year old boy

These are some of the responses Karn wrote for his school homework, he asked me to print them off but I decided to knick them and post them. Quite interesting to see his thought processes. First was on Citizenship

Citizenship

What is citizenship about? Citizenship is about various things for example:

· Working as a community

· Our roles in society

· Charity

· Patriotism

Working as a community is how we contribute to the general community we live in.

Our roles in society is about how everything we do affects the people around us. For instance, littering ruins the environment; recycling makes the area cleaner; walking instead of driving makes the air less polluted.

We also find out how Charities are run and how they are funded, why they support the cause they do.

We also look at patriotism and what it means to be British, a member of the country.

Second was on Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King – born on the 15^th of January 1929, - is one of the most famous men, peacefully fighting for racial equality, more specifically for black peoples rights. He also is famous for the brilliant, speech he gave – I had a dream. Throughout his life he stayed dedicated to his cause, for human rights, equality and justice.

He also lead and was involved in many campaigns and movements, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which was so enraging to some people to the extend that his house was mercilessly bombed. He was also involved in the Albany movement and Birmingham Campaign all events leading up to the March to Washington where the absolutely astounded the crowd with his ‘I had a dream’ speech with still is recognized as one of the finest speeches of all time.

However heart stirring his efforts were, there were always the relentless people that were ignorant of it, on the 4^th of April 1968 he was assassinated.

Influences

Martin Luther King was heavily influenced by Gandhi due to his huge success with his non-violent activism. Martin even made a journey to meet Gandhi’s family and there he learned about the ways of non-violent resistance and increasing his determination towards increasing black people’s civil rights.

Third was on what he thinks it means to be British. Funny, eh?

This is what the kinds in England are growing up to think of what’s to be British and one of the hero’s of mankind.

The curious story of Jesus Matzo

I was doing comfort shopping in Sainsbury's last weekend when I came across this stack of goods. I have to admit I was puzzled. Yehuda as the word stood for Christian or Jesus as that's what I have heard in my childhood. Matzo I knew was a Jewish bread similar to a Indian chapati.

The maker of this bread is Yehuda Matzo and the Matzo seems to be named after a gentleman called as Eliezer Ben Yehuda, one of the men who was mainly responsible for reviving a long dead language, Hebrew, into common usage. Read his wiki entry, fascinating story. How amazing, a single man fighting against all those odds, to resurrect a language long thought to be dead or extinct.

Curious how language becomes part of nationalism as we have seen in so many countries, whether in Tamil Nadu with Tamil, Wales with Welsh, Spanish versus English in USA.

 

Technorati Tags: Hebrew,History,Israel,Nationalism,Zionism

The Star of David on the Moroccan Flag (thanks, Larry

Thanks to my good friend, Larry Schwartz, this very interesting factoid came to my attention. Did you know that the Moroccan flag had the star of david emblazoned on it? and the reason why they had it was because all wanted to lay claim on the ancestery of Solomon the wise King.

And here's a new word for you, Vexillology, from the Latin vexillum, which, in Roman times, designated the standard of the army, is the study of flags.

read and wonder.



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

A Korean Nationalist Speaks on Education

This column is worth reading in its entirety and therefore I am posting it here. Education is highly emotive but it becomes even more dangerous when it starts to traverse the chasm which divides globalists/nationalists; right and left; liberals and conservatives, you name it. As you can see, even South Korea is facing the same issue. One thing which I noticed in my travels in South Korea (something that they share with Iran and Turkey, along with some other nations) is how nationalistic they are and how little others realise this sheer amount of nationalism. But read and weep!

Our Forefathers' Lessons Fell on Deaf Ears, by Kang Chun-suk

I have a couple of questions I'd like to put to the people of the Roh Moo-hyun
administration. I'd be more than pleased if the president, prime minister and
deputy premier would answer them, too. Only then will the arrogant 386
generation of former student activists now in office get serious.

The first question calls for identifying common features. Name two things these
figures from contemporary Korean history have in common: Lee Sang-jae, Syngman Rhee, Kim Jwa-jin, Lee Shi-young, Shin Chae-ho. Did you say they are all independence fighters? Then you're correct. But that's an answer any schoolchild who has read a Korean history book could give. Yes, these people do come from a list independence fighters, but you say you can't think of another quality they share? You, who boasted would rewrite our history, in which, you said, justice had been defeated and injustice prevailed, don't know it? Study your history books again. The correct answer is that they all aspired for the rebirth of
their fatherland and nation by establishing schools or becoming teachers.

Lee Sang-jae in 1894 established a foreign language school and served as
its principal. Syngman Rhee in 1895 taught English at Paichai Hakdang. Kim
Jwa-jin in 1907 set up Homyeong School in his hometown. Lee Shi-young in 1912
inaugurated Shin Heung Military Officer School in Bukgando (North Gando). And
Shin Chae-ho in 1905 taught at Mundong Hakwon in Cheongwon, North Chungcheong Province and established Sandong Hakwon.

Now let's identify one common feature that the following share: Kim Koo, Ahn Jung-geun, Lee Dong-hwi, Park Eun-sik, Ahn Chang-ho and Yi Sung-hun.

These too are all independence fighters. But is there more? The correct answer to this question, again, is that they all established schools or taught youngsters. Kim Koo established Bongyang School in Jangyeon, Hwanghae Province in 1900, Gwangjin School in 1904 and Yangsan School in 1906, and taught at each of them. Ahn Jung-geun established Samhung School in Jinnampo in 1906 and then Donui School. Park Eun-sik played the leading role in establishing Seobuk Cooperative School in 1906 and later became its principal. Lee Dong-hwi set up Hapil School in Gangwon Province in 1905, after which he opened schools in Kaesong, Pyongyang and Wonsan. Ahn Chang-ho set up Jeomjin School in 1899, the first modern school in the northwest, and started Daeseong School in 1907. And Yi Sung-hun established Osan School in Jeongju, North Pyongan Province, in 1907.

Although I don't know what scores the president, prime minister and deputy premier might have gotten, the Cheong Wa Dae 386ers would evidently have scored zero. For had they known these historical facts, they wouldn't have bungled the nation's education system so much.

Between 1905 when Korea was deprived of its diplomatic rights under the Eulsa Treaty and 1910 when the nation was colonized by Japan, thousands of schools were established in every nook and corner of the country.

The phenomenon was spurred by idea that the only way for the country to rebuild
and regain its independence was to train talented students with awareness and
savvy of world affairs. It's lamentable that the awakening didn't come 50 years
or at least 30 years earlier. That gap of 50 or 30 years resulted in the
nation's ruin. Observing the fruits of good education and the harm from bad
education requires the passage of time. People may regret their misfortunes
after years of bad education has ruined their country, but by then it's too
late.

What is our situation like today, 100 years after we had to suffer such grievances? In the past five years this administration has failed to develop a single elementary school, middle school, high school or university that can compete with their counterparts overseas. Instead it has crushed our budding talents. It has exhausted the national coffers by swelling the number of civil servants by 60,000 and building dozens of administrative offices in empty fields. It has been obsessed by a mistaken belief that shortening the tall and lengthening the small means equality, and that that is the objective of education.

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

Arab Americans should not enlist in the US Army

Now here's another example of how not to make friends and influence people. Arab Americans are looked at very suspiciously. Agreed. There is massive discrimination! Agreed! But that's for Asian Americans as well, and for Hispanic Americans, Black Americans, Native Americans, etc. Then this blessed lady says that Arabs shouldn't join the US Army because that will be "helping the US government tear our homelands and our people apart". Here are few pointers for you, young lady:

1. Your people, assuming that you are in possession of an American passport, are Americans. The US Army is for ALL Americans.
2. Your homeland, assuming again that you have an American passport, is the United States of America. The US army is tearing apart USA? Americans? Very confusing.

As an American, I wonder what your homeland is and who your people are? Or are you Arab and just visiting Detroit, and will be going back, and thus are telling your American friends not to join the US Army?

Here are couple of links for you to study, one relating to African Americans and the second relating to the Japanese Americans. Very sad indeed! "People who forget the past are condemned to repeat it"

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Print this article Nadia Abou-Karr Arab Americans: Resist, Don't Enlist July 27, 2007 01:01 AM Arab Americans: Resist, Don't Enlist By Nadia Abou-Karr DETROIT, 27 July 2007, (Arabisto.com): I'm disturbed by the gratuitous National Guard solicitation targeted to Arab Americans that I have been seeing in places like The Arab American News and Dearborn's Arab International Festival. I am bombarded with these misleading, exploitative ads on TV, in the movie theater, and now in my Arab American media? Am I the only one who thinks it's abusive and unfair for Arabs to advocate service in the American military to other Arabs? Are our lives worth so little that we should sacrifice them in service of a government that has institutionalized discrimination against us, in order to perpetuate the same type of war and imperialism that brought many of our families here? More importantly, are there so few rich Arab Americans setting up endowments and scholarship funds for low income Arab American youth that our youth feel they have no other choice but to enlist if they want to have any chance at the trifecta (doctor, lawyer, engineer) of Arab American success? With all the pressure put on young Arab Americans, regardless of economic status, to achieve high educational goals, enlisting in the military might seem incredibly appealing to those of us with few other financing options. Why not increase the options? I'm reminded of this quote, from Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's book Racism Without Racists (via UBUNTU): We all must participate in the new movement and contribute in whatever way we can. Some will provide expertise, others money, others time, and others will craft and participate in the actions required to advance the new politics of change. We all need to regain the energy we seem to have lost, drop the pessimism that has filled our souls, and get over the individualism and materialism that has eaten so many of us from within. Our participation in this movement is a must. We cannot remain as spectators of the racial game being played before our own eyes in America. We must do all we can to increase our options for survival beyond total assimilation and acceptance of American patriotic values that demand our subordinance. We are all different, with different values and lifestyle, but one thing I am certain of is that helping the US government tear our homelands and our people apart will not make any of us free.

Iraqi attitudes continue to shift toward secular values or are they?

Here are two stories, both from respected organisations, both claiming diametrically opposite views. The first one, based on a survey, claims that Iraqi's are becoming a nation, increasingly secular and nationalistic. The other one is claiming that this nationalism view is rare and despite the football victory, its going down the toilet. How is it possible that such a wide divergence takes place? Well, the clue lies in the survey, as you can see, the survey was primarily carried out in Baghdad, a cosmopolitan place anyway, so one would expect that secularism and nationalism, so close to the levers of power, would be but normal.

But as we have seen, the challenge to the nation of Iraq is coming not from Baghdad itself but from outside. See here for a previous essay on the future of Iraq.

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Aug. 2, 2007
Iraqi attitudes continue to shift toward secular values

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—The political values of Iraqis are increasingly secular and nationalistic, according to a series of surveys of nationally representative samples of the population from December 2004-March 2007.

Findings from a July 2007 survey are expected to be released before the end of the summer.
Click image to see slideshow of charts

So far, the surveys show a decline in popular support for religious government in Iraq and an increase in support for secular political rule, said sociologist Mansoor Moaddel, who is affiliated with Eastern Michigan University and the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR).

"Iraqis have a strong sense of national identity that transcends religious and political lines," Moaddel said. "The recent out-pouring of national pride at the Asian Cup victory of the Iraqi soccer team showed that this sense of national pride remains strong, despite all the sectarian strife and violence."

In the March 2007 survey, 54 percent of Iraqis surveyed described themselves as "Iraqis, above all," (as opposed to "Muslims, above all" or "Arabs, above all") compared with just 28 percent who described themselves that way in April 2006. Three-quarters of Iraqis living in Baghdad said they thought of themselves in terms of their national identity, as Iraqis above all.

"This is a much higher proportion than we found in other Middle Eastern capitals," said Moaddel, adding that such high levels of national identity may counteract tendencies to split the nation based on sectarian differences.

The surveys conducted in December 2004 and April 2006 were supported by grants from the National Science Foundation to U-M political scientists Ronald Inglehart and Mark Tessler. Moaddel collaborated on those surveys, then added some of the same questions to an October 2006 survey of 7,730 Iraqis supervised by the Multinational Forces Assessment Effects Group. In March 2007, Moaddel collaborated with Iraqi social scientist Munqith Daghir, adding the same questions to another survey of 7,411 Iraqis. The surveys were conducted by a private Iraqi research group headed by Daghir, the Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies.

The proportion of Shi's, Sunnis and Kurds interviewed in each of the surveys was roughly representative of their presence in the population, according to Moaddel.

Overall, only 18 percent of those surveyed in October 2006 thought that having an Islamic government where religious authorities have absolute power is "very good," compared with 26 percent surveyed in December 2004.

About a third of those surveyed in March 2007 strongly agreed that Iraq would be a better place if religion and politics were separated, compared with 24 percent in December 2004.

Additionally, Moaddel found a significant increase from April 2006 to October 2006 in the percent of Iraqis who gave six religious political parties a very unfavorable rating.

"The escalating violence in Iraq gives a bleak impression of that country's future," Moaddel said. "Sectarian conflict seems to be increasing on a daily basis, with militias massacring hundreds of Sunnis and Shi'is solely on the basis of their religious identities.

"Yet it would be a mistake to think that this bloodlust represents widespread sentiment among Iraqis as a whole. While neither American nor Iraqi security officials have yet found a way to tame the militias, the Iraqi public is increasingly drawn toward a vision of a democratic, non-sectarian government for the country."



Related Links:

U-M Institute for Social Research

Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies

Mansoor Moaddel



Contact: Diane Swanbrow
Phone: (734) 647-4416


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A winning goal, then back to war

Aug 2nd 2007
From The Economist print edition

The euphoria of a footballing victory faded fast

JUST when it looks as if salvaging a unified Iraq will be hopeless, there comes a reminder of how strongly many Iraqis still want to live together in a single nation. Iraq's 1-0 victory over Saudi Arabia in the final game of the Asian Cup in Jakarta on July 29th set off a wave of celebrations. Fans ignored the danger of car bombs (which had killed 50 after the Iraqi victory in the semi-finals) as well as the risk of falling bullets (fired into the air to celebrate despite a ban) and poured onto the streets. After the semi-finals, crowds waved the Iraqi flag in the northern city of Arbil, where it is normally denounced by the Kurds as the symbol of the army which waged genocidal war against them. And children in the militantly Shia Baghdad slum of Sadr City chanted the name of Younis Mahmoud, the striker whose goal won the game and who is a Sunni.

Such outpourings of Iraqi nationalism are rare, but they happen. Often they follow a tragedy, such as when Sunnis risked their lives diving into the Tigris to save hundreds of Shia pilgrims who fell into the river after the collapse of a bridge in 2005. At other times they act to prevent a tragedy, such as when Shia clerics called on their followers, apparently successfully, not to retaliate against innocent Sunnis after the second bombing of the al-Askari shine in Samarra in June of this year. Iraqis will also occasionally speak of smaller, more private acts of national unity, such as Sunnis caring for their Shia neighbours' houses after the latter have been run out of them by insurgents.

In honour of the win, the Sunnis' main coalition, the Iraqi Consensus Front, put off a decision on whether to withdraw from the Shia-led government, so as not to spoil the day's joy. A lovely sentiment. But on August 1st it decided—and it withdrew.

The footballing victory has therefore done little to overcome a political deadlock that has stymied proposed legislation on oil sharing and a partial roll-back of the purge that threw many members of the former ruling Baath party out of their jobs. The glow of sporting glory faded further when Iraq's parliament announced that in spite of the continuing strife it would take a month's break in August. And on the first day of that month the bombers were back. More than 60 people were killed in two bombings in Baghdad.