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Monday, July 18, 2005
Dancing with the Taliban
By Irfan Husain
IF we thought what happened to Mukhtaran Mai was bad, look at what Imrana is going through in India.
In the former case, the state victimized the victim by placing her on the ECL and taking away her passport. In the latter, the poor woman was not only raped by her father-in-law, but has been told by the mufti of the Darul Uloom at Deoband that she cannot now live with her husband, and must marry her rapist.
According to Yawar Baig, an Indian scholar, the fatwa is based on a ruling by Imam Abu Haneefa, the founder of the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence. But nobody can believe that it could have been the eminent jurist’s intention to so cruelly punish the victim. Clearly, the Deoband mufti has ignored the spirit of Islamic law.
Indian human rights activists are understandably furious over this fatwa: not only is the rapist getting away scot free, but is being rewarded. In fact, the whole business of having Muslims being governed under special religious dispensation based on family laws leaves Muslim women specially vulnerable. Time and again, they have been short-changed in divorce proceedings, for instance, and denied child support and alimony.
This whole travesty began with the famous Shahbano case which went all the way to the Supreme Court. Ever since, Indian Muslim women have been denied the protection guaranteed by the Indian constitution. In this controversial case, it was the secular Congress Party under Rajiv Gandhi that took the line of least resistance in order to woo the Muslim vote.
But if Indian politicians do not have the moral fibre to end this anomaly, it is backward Muslim men who take advantage of it to repress their women. By seeking such archaic and clearly misguided interpretations of Islamic jurisprudence, the Indian ulema are demonstrating their refusal to change with the times. Worse, they are making a mockery of the holy texts they are supposed to uphold.
Indeed, in recent years, Muslims have seldom missed a chance to show their faith in the worst possible light. Take the wretched Taliban as an example. After the public mistreatment of their women, they banned music, kite-flying and even chess. In effect, they were saying to the world that Islam forbids its followers to have fun. Then to top it all, they destroyed the priceless giant statues of the Buddha in Bamian, thus not only offending the millions of Buddhists in Asia, but also all those concerned with our cultural heritage. By the time the Americans attacked Afghanistan, the Taliban had forfeited all sympathy and support. Even three years after their country’s occupation, the Taliban resistance is seen as a ragtag band of stone-age rabble who want to drag Afghanistan back to pre-history. They are not perceived as the heroic figures the Mujahideen were while fighting the Soviets.
This inflexible refusal to recognize that the world is changing has placed Muslims on the defensive around the world. In dress, public appearance and customs, the majority of Muslims refuse to integrate into the mainstream wherever they are. They have thus consigned themselves to the periphery of society, viewed with perplexity and fear. In their turn, they generally despise those in whose midst they live and work.
Had this suspicion and resentment been limited to individuals, things wouldn’t have been as bad as they are actually becoming. But the rest of the world is coming to a consensus that Muslims are generally backward people, prone to supporting violence against those of other faiths. This has serious consequences, especially for those who choose to make a life for themselves in non-Muslim societies.
For instance, Muslim women who insist on wearing the hijab in the West are unlikely to be employed as receptionists, or in any job where public dealing is required. Ditto if you have a long, unkempt beard. Businessmen are concerned that customers might be put off by this public display of faith in secular societies. And employers often do not want to hire somebody who demands time off during the working day to go off and pray.
While we may deplore such attitudes, they are a reality. When economic reasons drive people to emigrate, logic demands that they remain open to change in order to better their lives. And yet, survey after survey in the UK have shown that Pakistanis, Arabs and Bangladeshis are doing considerably worse than other migrant groups.
Many Muslims in Pakistan support the application of Muslim family laws to their co-religionists in India. And yet in Pakistan, the minorities seldom have such preferential treatment. We deplore the decline of Urdu in India, and yet are unconcerned about the state of Hindi in our country. These examples of double standards can be multiplied endlessly. In short, we expect and demand far greater respect for our faith and its followers than we are willing to accord this to others.
Why are we our own worst enemies? Part of the answer lies in the past. Until relatively recently, Muslim nations were powerful and thus respected. But with colonization and the long decline of the Ottoman Empire came a sullen apathy and a denial of reality. Now even though Muslim countries are nominally free, they lack the will to change the status quo because this requires introspection and a major change in attitude. Rulers exploit this state of mind to perpetuate their illegitimate grip on power by blaming the West for all our ills.
As Imrana’s case so painfully illustrates, we remain wedded to the most retrogressive interpretation of our faith, and thus ensure that we remain backward. After partition, many Indian Muslims opted out of the educational system because most state schools in North India taught in Hindi. Thus disadvantaged, these Muslims then complained of bias against them when they applied for jobs.
I am sure there is prejudice in India, just as there is in the West. But we can hardly accuse others when there is so much discrimination against non-Muslims in Pakistan. The way to overcome barriers is to assimilate, not stand aloof and complain from the sidelines. I certainly am not suggesting that we give up our cultural identity. Far from it. But we do need to shed some of our rigid attitudes if we are not all to be lumped together with the Taliban.
Arif 10:26 PM
Between a rock and a hard place
By Irfan Husain
OUR path from one self-created crisis to another is littered with expressions of outrage and exasperation from well-meaning journalists, human rights activists and plain, decent citizens.
Take the uproar over the Hasba bill in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) Assembly as an example. Given the comfortable majority the ruling coalition of clerics enjoys, it was fairly certain that the bill would soon become law — which it did on Thursday. The prospect of having an all-powerful religious enforcer in the shape of a mohtasib backed by a phalanx of religious police fills most people with horror.
Editorial writers, columnists and TV commentators have condemned this bill for being in conflict with the rights enshrined in the Constitution. They fear, for instance (and quite rightly, too), that the province will soon have Saudi- and Taliban-style “police for the enforcement of virtue and curtailment of vice” to impose a certain version of Sharia law.
As readers are aware, the Saudi religious police routinely beat up or jail anybody seen on the streets at prayer times, and cane women who are showing an inch or two of ankle. In a recent demonstration of religious fervour, they pushed back girls fleeing a blazing hostel into the flames because they were not adequately covered. Several girls died as a result.
When in power in Afghanistan, the Taliban went a step further, and decreed that men whose beards were not of a certain length would be punished. Their treatment of women aroused the anger of the civilized world. Not content with brutalizing the living, they destroyed ancient statues for not conforming to their code.
So understandably, many ordinary Pakistanis are horrified at the prospect of similar controls imposed on a province in Pakistan.
And yet, a little reflection will show that what is happening in the NWFP has a certain implacable logic to it. After all, the majority of the people of the province voted the MMA into power. And our Islamic parties have never made a secret of their agenda.
Just as anybody who had read Hitler’s Mein Kampf could not later say he had no idea what he was going to get when he voted the Nazis into power, our brethren in the NWFP have no reason to complain. They are getting what they voted for, no more and no less. Even allowing for the normal amount of rigging, the MMA does seem to command a genuine majority.
Even before this latest manifestation of religious zeal, we had witnessed a series of Talibanesque decisions emanating from Peshawar. Women patients requiring X-rays could not be scanned by male technicians; advertizing posters with women were banned; and video shops were shut down. All these draconian measures were enforced with varying degrees of enthusiasm by civil servants and policemen. Now these (and far fiercer) edicts will be rammed down the populace’s throats by an authority whose decisions cannot be challenged in any court.
In Nathiagali, I recently met an old friend who has served as a senior government officer in the NWFP for many years. According to him, the rule of the mullahs has been an unmitigated disaster for his province. No development activities are going on, corruption is rampant, and ordinary people are miserable. And yet, he continued, the MMA will probably get re-elected in the next polls because the opposition parties are in such disarray.
This brings us to the question of why people elect politicians and parties clearly unsuited to the task of providing good government. In this particular case, our clerics, whatever their expertise in their chosen field, are hardly trained in economics and administration. Yes, you can argue that more secular politicians and soldiers have hardly been exemplars of brilliant government. Nevertheless, mullahs have not been successful as managers in other Muslim countries as well. In oil-rich Iran, for example, mismanagement and corruption have caused widespread unemployment and misery.
Early on in his destructive rule, General Zia declared that henceforth, Pakistan would be “a laboratory of Islam”. In case he has an Internet connection in his bit of the nether regions, I would like the dead dictator to know that his laboratory has spawned a Frankenstein monster that is now threatening to devour us all. Although for him the exploitation of religion was largely a political ploy, the legacy he has left behind has devastated the country, pitting one sect against another, and one Pakistani against another.
But can we honestly put all our troubles at Zia’s door? In truth, he only used the men and material that were already at hand.
The mullahs’ anti-modernism, anti-secularism agenda had long been in place, with successive rulers caving in to their irrational demands. Zia merely accelerated this process. In Islamic history, there has long been a nexus between the clergy and illegitimate rulers. This proud tradition has been in evidence in Pakistani politics virtually since the country came into being.
Modernists maintain that the interpretation of Islam being upheld and enforced by the religious parties is far too literal and removed from the modern world. Here, they are playing to the mullahs’ strength because they can quote chapter and verse to prove that the words of God as expressed in the Holy Book are immutable and timeless. This debate has been conducted over the years, and there is little left to add to the arguments from both sides.
Ultimately, unswerving followers of any faith that demands greater focus on the spiritual than the temporal will end up between a rock and a hard place. In this case, the rock is the insistence of the mullahs that we follow their narrow interpretation of the holy texts, while the hard place is the pitiless requirement of the modern world to change with the times.
As we are discovering to our cost, this is not a comfortable place to be.
Arif 10:23 PM
Madness, not salvation
By Ayaz Amir
THE youngsters suspected of carrying out the London bombing attacks are all Muslims of Pakistani origin with names like Shehzad Tanveer, Hasib Hussain, etc. Can it get any darker than this?
Coherent ideology, my foot. The profiles of these suspects as pieced together by UK authorities suggest they would flunk an elementary test in civics, which is not to doubt that if indeed they were behind this outrage, they would have been sustained by the thought they were on the quickest ticket to paradise.
The common denominator distinguishing the Bin Laden-inspired terrorism emanating from within the Muslim world is simplicity of a kind so frightening it verges on the demonic.
But draw a sharp line between Bin Ladenism and events in Iraq. What we see in Iraq is a national resistance (in Iraq even called the “honourable resistance”) bringing together all Iraqi factions and driven by a common hatred of the American occupation. The Iraqis are fighting for their independence, not for Osama bin Laden as the Americans desperately suggest when they demonize Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and invest him with mythic prowess and omnipotence.
Even so, the occupation of Iraq gives Bin Ladenism not just another outrage to denounce but the most potent weapon available to stoke the fires of anti-Americanism. This is another instance of the law of unintended consequences, the misnamed “war on terror” producing its own harvest of terror.
Is the Pakistani Muslim community in the UK bracing itself for a backlash after the London bombings? It has ample reason to do so. Even if, disregarding the racist extreme right, the vast majority of Britons are tolerant people, it can safely be assumed that feelings against Muslims and Pakistanis will harden.
It is no use saying that Islam is a religion of peace or that there is a foul plot afoot to misrepresent Islam and blacken its name when from Bali to Madrid to London it is Muslims who are behind acts of terrorism. To outsiders a religion is known by the fruits it produces and if the present brand of terrorism has a Muslim substance to it, it becomes difficult to sell the ‘true meaning of Islam’.
It is like trying to say that what was practised in the Soviet Union was not true communism. No one has the time or inclination to grapple with such fine theories.
These are the wages of thoughtless terrorism. Misguided zealots bring down the Twin Towers and far from the pillars of capitalism being shaken, it is the Muslim community across the United States which has to bear the brunt of the bitter and often mindless reaction. Likewise in the UK where from now on it will be hard for the ordinary Briton to dissociate the image of a mosque from his ideas of terrorism.
Guilt by association: Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib give all of the United States a bad name; four Muslim suspects in the UK give the entire Muslim community there a bad name. So what precise point were the London bombers, or rather their remote-control handlers, trying to make?
Still, give full marks to British restraint. Although random attacks on mosques have occurred and all South Asians living in the UK feel a bit threatened — and although it is easy to imagine pub-goers, after the first rush of lager, banging their fists on the table and exclaiming “Bloody Pakistanis” — a conscious effort is on to ensure that race relations do not deteriorate and the Muslim community as a whole is not held responsible for the London tragedy.
If something like these bombings had occurred in India, the Indian army by now would have been sitting at the Pakistan border with fresh talk of the subcontinent becoming a ‘nuclear flashpoint’. (The way we bandy about this phrase almost suggests as if we consider it a mark of great distinction, setting us apart from the rest of the world.)
Of course innocent people have been killed at the hands of American and British forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. But should that be an excuse to target innocent people elsewhere? As for opposing America and the occupation of Iraq, the anti-war movement in the western world is stronger than anything rustled up by the world of Islam. Any million-person marches against the Iraq war in Cairo, Amman, Riyadh, Islamabad or Jakarta or a single squeak of protest from that most august symbol of Muslim helplessness, the Organization of Islamic Conference? (What a name?)
Because, for the most part our misfortune is to live in mediaeval monarchies and tin pot autocracies, what we in the Muslim world excel in is internalized anger which, far from harming anyone else, turns us, collectively, into victims of impotent despair — despair falling eternally short of meaningful action, despair deriving a kind of masochistic pleasure from its own helplessness, despair now finding expression in mindless terrorism.
Lacking the power to correct our own weaknesses, we tend to blame outsiders for our misfortunes. Thus, even as Muslim rulers turn to the US for support and protection, at the popular level frustration boils over into strident anti-Americanism. Sure, there is much that America can be blamed for, not least its blind support of Israel. But we should not lose sight of the fact that America has not invented Muslim weakness; it merely exploits it, turning it to its advantage.
America has a vested interest in Muslim dictatorships because dictatorships are easier to handle. But then again, Muslim dictatorship is not an American invention; merely an American convenience.
True, the CIA helped topple Mossadegh and reinstall Reza Shah Pahlevi as Iranian ruler. But with no little help from powerful sections of Iranian society. The CIA helped trigger a bloodbath in Indonesia after the fall of Soekarno. But with no little help from the Indonesian army. The Americans have always found it easy to use Pakistan but never without a great deal of readiness on Pakistan’s part to be used.
Indeed, Pakistan’s generals, babus and politicos get upset, to the point of accusing America of betrayal, when America, because of other priorities, shows a lack of interest in using Pakistan. We are happiest with the American connection when being exploited to the full.
America has detractors and critics at the popular level in the Muslim world. At the upper levels of the Muslim ummah (the great brotherhood of Islam) it has never suffered for lack of collaborators.
Bin Ladenism, which is a peculiar distillation of Wahabi Islam, and the terrorism which has come to be its favourite tool, are no answers to American domination or Muslim weakness. In fact, Bin Ladenism, with its narrow interpretation of Islam, is itself a reflection of Muslim weakness because it shows a preoccupation with the very elements which constitute the core of Muslim backwardness: a romantic attachment to a glorified past, an emphasis on literalism, and a comprehensive failure to understand what makes the modern world tick.
The answer to Muslim decadence lies in a political renaissance: a replacement of autocracy with democracy. Of course this is easier said than done but if we can’t achieve it — there being nothing on the horizon to suggest that we easily can — we should at least understand that terrorism such as that in London is no answer to anything. In fact, far from liberating anything, it only makes the Muslim predicament worse by lending strength to the false doctrine of a ‘clash of civilizations’.
The only clash the world of Islam faces is with itself and the myriad aspects of its own backwardness.
In this context, Bin Ladenism is a distraction. Far from hastening the demise of Muslim autocracy, or getting America to loosen its stranglehold over the riches of the Middle East, it is in danger of becoming a convenient alibi for assorted Muslim kings and dictators. Instead of having to focus on political reform, the need of the hour for Muslim societies, they take the easier road by becoming preachers of “enlightened” Islam. Islam stands in no need of certificates from anyone, least of all from the cardboard figures masquerading as rulers. But the world of Islam could do with less lies and more honesty, less dictatorship and more democracy. Only then will the battle for ‘enlightenment’ be joined.
Arif 10:20 PM
The primrose path to paradise
By Ardeshir Cowasjee
DAWN July 17, 2005
THIS world now has more than its fair share of trials and tribulations, of “blood, blood, destruction, destruction” (to use Osama bin Laden’s famous phrase), and it is undeniable that for the past decade or so Pakistan has made its due contribution.Our governments and army have valiantly supported groups such as the Taliban, ostracized by the rest of the world, Ziaul Haq’s expedient brand of Islamization has rotted the core of the nation and in no mean way furthered the breakdown of law and order.We should have been able to learn much about the benefits of law and order from the rule of the British Raj, but as with all that was good and valid bequeathed to us, we chose to discard the valuable law and order legacy. In post-Raj Britain, had law and order not prevailed, the IRA would have caused far more havoc than they managed to do, and thousands more would have been murdered by the discriminate bombings scattered around the entire country.
The happenings of 7/7 were not the first disruptive acts of British Muslims of Pakistani descent. Britain’s first Muslim suicide bomber was Mohammed Bilal of the Jaish-i-Mohammed who on Christmas Day 2000 rammed his vehicle packed with explosives into an Indian military post in Kashmir. In April 2003, Asif Hanif and Omar Sharif walked into a jazz club in the high security vicinity of the US embassy in Tel Aviv, detonated their bombs, and killed three clubbers. Hanif was blown up, the other managed to flee but was found dead in the sea a week later.Three young British Muslims, born of Pakistani parents, achieved far more in London the week before last with blood and gore aplenty, and gained their primrose path to paradise (so they assumed was the case).Intelligence reports in Britain last year had informed the government that an estimated 10,000 youngsters were supporters of groups adhering to the policies of al Qaeda. The majority were so branded because of their attendance at a conference hosted by Hizb-ul-Tahrir, a “structured extremist organization,” as the British Home Office describes it. In addition, some 500 British citizens of mixed race have reportedly been trained in the Taliban camps in Afghanistan and the madressahs in Pakistan.
The worst fallout of 7/7 will, of course, be on the unfortunate Pakistani immigrants and their descendants, the larger majority of them being law-abiding citizens, getting on with their lives, earning, educating their children, and contributing substantially to the British economy. They will suffer on account of the totally irrational and wicked beliefs of a handful of young Muslims, brainwashed and deranged.Pakistan will also suffer badly — yet again. Image-building is not an easy task, and as a result of such acts and connections, to amend the image now universally floated may be almost impossible within the foreseeable future. And the international press does not help — it reports what it sees and hears, it is not concerned with public relations.
One highly damaging column written by an Iranian commentator, amir Taheri, a Muslim himself (presumably) was printed in The Times (London) on July 8. Taheri is a regular contributor on Middle Eastern Affairs. His views are open to debate, and the newspaper has invited its readers to send in e-mails via www.timesonline.co.uk/debate.According to him, “The ideological soil in which al Qaeda and the many groups using its brand name grow was described by one of its original masterminds, the Pakistani Abul-Ala al-Maudoodi more than 40 years ago. It goes something like this: When God created mankind He made all their bodily needs and movements subject to inescapable biological rules but decided to leave their spiritual, social and political needs and movements largely subject to their will.“Soon, however, it became clear that man cannot run his affairs in the way God wants. So God started sending prophets to warn man and try to goad him on to the right path. A total of 128,000 prophets were sent, including Moses and Jesus. They all failed. Finally, God sent Muhammad as the last of His prophets and the bearer of His ultimate message, Islam. With the advent of Islam all previous religions were ‘abrogated’ (mansukh), and their followers regarded as ‘infidel’ (kuffar). The aim of all good Muslims, therefore, is to convert humanity to Islam, which regulates man’s spiritual, economic, political and social moves to the last detail.“I would only add — and so would al-Maudoodi — that conversion is not the only option. Subjugation as ‘dhimmis’ under the rule of the Islamic state is the other.“But what if non-Muslims refuse to take the right path? Here answers diverge. Some believe that the answer is dialogue and argument until followers of the ‘abrogated faiths’ recognize their error and agree to be saved by converting to Islam. This is the view of most of the imams preaching in the mosques in the West. But others, including Osama bin Laden, a disciple of al-Maudoodi, believe that the western-dominated world is too mired in corruption to hear any argument, and must be shocked into conversion through spectacular ghazavat (raids) of the kind we saw in New York and Washington in 2001, in Madrid last year, and now in London.“That yesterday’s attack was intended as a ghazava was confirmed in a statement by the Secret Organization Group of al Qaeda of Jihad Organization in Europe, an Islamist group that claimed responsibility for yesterday’s atrocity. It said “We have fulfilled our promise and carried out our blessed military raid (ghazava) in Britain after our mujahideen exerted strenuous efforts over a long period of time to ensure the success of the raid.” Those who carry out these missions are the ghazis, the highest of all Islamic distinctions just below that of the shahid or martyr. A ghazi who also becomes a shahid will be doubly meritorious.”
This is all very frightening. Maudoodi was founder and first amir of the Jamaat, and there must be with us now in Pakistan millions of adherents to his cause, including his descendants, the gentlemen of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, who are on their march in the NWFP. That OBL was a disciple is even more unsettling in the light of his heroic stature with many of our youths here in Pakistan and all over what is known as the Muslim world.After he came to Pakistan in August 1947, Maudoodi concentrated on the establishment of a hard-core Islamic state and Islamized society, and he wrote profusely to explain the different aspects of the Islamic way of life and its socio-political aspects. He vociferously and violently criticized the various governments of Pakistan and their failure to transform the state. A great firebrand, he was arrested and jailed on several occasions, the last being in 1953 when he was sentenced to death by the martial law authorities on the charge of writing a seditious pamphlet on the Qadiani problem. He cheerfully expressed his preference for death to seeking clemency. “If the time of my death has come, no one can keep me from it; and if it has not come, they cannot send me to the gallows even if they hang themselves upside down in trying to do so,” he informed his adherents. His sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment and in 1956 he was released.Thereafter, he stomped the world preaching his ungentle and radical brand of Islam. He died in the land of the Great White Satan (surely much to his chagrin), in Buffalo, New York, in 1979 at the age of 76 — he was born a British subject.Says Taheri, disciple bin Laden believes that the West must be attacked and terrorized. Being too cowardly to retaliate, it will eventually “do what it must do”, which is to give in.
The man who now calls the shots, Ayman al-Zawahiri, does not agree. His theory is that the Islamists should first win the war inside several vulnerable Muslim countries — Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. It seems we may be in for an even rougher ride than we have so far had.President General Pervez Musharraf has asked us all to follow a course of ‘enlightened moderation’. To many a mind, an enlightened mind is per se moderate, and a moderate mind per se enlightened. Be that as it may, the men he has selected to run his North-West Frontier Province government have just democratically passed the Hasba Bill. All that the general’s federal government can do is to make a reference to the advisory jurisdiction of the Supreme Court for an opinion. We must hope that the gentlemen who sit on the Bench are both truly moderate and enlightened.
Arif 10:08 PM
Sunday, August 31, 2003
Souriez Arif et Elizae!
Arif 6:44 PM
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Maybe this war is (was) right for the wrong reasons. Take a moment to consider why the Judaeo-Christian world is way ahead of the civilization game. And not just ahead of Jihadi Muslims, but also of Hindutva Hungry Hindus and Buddhists drowsy with Nirvana. For a full analysis you may refer to The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbons and The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas Friedman. A key role is played by democracy and separation of the church and state in most wordly matters. Contrast that to mullah driven politics that consign 50% of the population (women, for the geniuses who have not figured this out) to slavery and rath yatras (google Advani and yatra for details) blaming the ills of civilization on another religious community rather than focussing on problems that can and should be fixed. At the very least this war will prove a catalyst for some introspection on the part of these civilizations to detrmine the cause of their unequivocal and utter defeat. Yes, Thomas Jefferson would not have waged this war and Ben Franklin's diplomacy would have been far successful than that of Colin Powell. Yes, the only WMD found in Iraq will be gasoline that through the engines of gas-guzzling SUVs poisons American cities. Yes, as in any war may innocents have died. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Yet, at the end of the day it will make the Mubarak's, Advani's, Saudi princes, Musharraf's, and even the Sharon's pause for a moment and reexamine what it is that they are doing.
And if at the end of this summer gas is 75 cents a gallon, that will be a most welcome bonus.
Arif 7:02 PM
Sunday, December 22, 2002
OK, so my system is unrealistic and utopian and the system as well as my moral authority to propose one has been subject to criticism from names that span the alphabet, from Alix to Zytka. There is however an alternative: The Open Source Movement. The most famous progeny of this system is the Linux operating system founded by Linus Thorwald. Lest it be construed that this system is confined to software let me put forth an example from one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, Ben Franklin.
In describing his invention, the Franklin stove, Franklin wrote:
"Gov'r. Thomas was so pleas'd with the construction of this stove, as described in it, that he offered to give me a patent for the sole vending of them for a term of years; but I declin'd it from a principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, viz., That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously."
Arif 10:12 PM
Wednesday, December 04, 2002
Reading List
John Rawls: A Theory of Justice
Jaques Barzum: House of Intellect
Arif 11:30 PM
Wednesday, November 20, 2002
How would this work in practice? Take my infant nephew Bilal. He would be born with a billion Tokens. Note we do not use money in this system as it tends to get soiled. Tokens will be coins made of the same titanium alloy used to make hip prostheses. The astute reader will understand the symbolism of this choice of material. Bilal's billions will be spent on any item that gives him pleasure but is not a necessity. Thus titanium alloy rattlers are in but diaper genies are out. Parental misuse of Bilal's billions risks time on Ryker's Island or Maggie's farm. Given his nonverbal status at this age financial outlays are likely to be minimal. The funds will be allowed to grow in Vanguard's balanced index fund that follows the efficient market hypothesis elucidated by Eugene Fama and uses the assest allocation principles of Harry Markowitz, both Nobel laureates from the University of Chicago. Once Bilal learns to speak his wish will be his command within the contraints of his account. A huge advantage of the new system is that it capitalizes (pun intended) upon what Einstein called the miracle of compound interest in a manner that was hitherto impossible. Thereby the wealth of the global nation will be significantly increased with trickle-down Reagonomics doing the rest to ensure that no baby in Bangladesh dies of hunger. As for Bilal he could have that red choo-choo whenever he wants. Or for that matter an S-Class Mercedes complete with trophy wife. This example sounds sexist, however the system is not. Token allocation is based upon the simple fact of birth and not gender or any other privilege or lack thereof. Thus the trophy wife target through the accident of market timing may have compounded more tokens than Bilal and may be able to buy him as trophy husband instead.
Arif 9:01 AM
One of the major difficulties with capitalism is the tyranny of old age. Take a peek into any S-Class Mercedes not driven by a chauffer. At the wheel you will find either the twenty year-old supermodel trophy wife of a sixty year-old excecutive or the sixty year-old executive himself. What about the rest of us normal twenty or thirty year-olds? Or for that matter the normal forty year-olds, for in my book forty is still young? Why can we not have such possesions? A huge improvement on the current system would be to invert the age pyramid. Have children possess huge amounts of wealth that graduallly declines to nothing at the time of death. Of course we could avoid the Marxist lack of productivity incentives by making the rate of decline inversely proportional to personal productivity.
Arif 8:00 AM
Sunday, November 10, 2002
In all I want to reach
The inmost part
In work, in seeking the way,
In disturbance of the heart.
To the essence of the passing days
To their cause
To the bases, to the roots,
To the very core.
--Boris Pasternak
Arif 5:17 PM
In the beginning there was the word. And the word was that of Karl Marx. From each according to his ability to each according to his need. What could be more humane? The workers march towards the Kremlin. Brotherhood. Fraternity. Equality. Zhivago watches from the balcony. An aristocrat with ideals. Full of empathy for the striving masses. But the Tsar sets his minions loose. The march is no more peaceful. The revolution is doomed to violence and thereby to failure.
Arif 4:31 PM
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