absolutely alex’s adventures & times

“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

-Voltaire-

Freedom of expression is one of the principal bases of living in an open, liberal society. We are allowed to say what we think and feel, but not without consequences, of course. Remarks or opinions judged inappropriate by society or the affected party usually have a way of coming round to haunt the utterer. Yet, we agree that in an open society, free speech is a basic right that we enjoy.

Against this backdrop, the online release of an anti-Islam, anti-Koran short film by notorious Dutch legislator Geert Wilders, should not receive the condemnation it has garnered. Wilders has a right to express what he feels, despite the efforts of some Dutch politicians to ban his film. What could be criticized, however, is the content of Wilders’ film.

Titled “Fitna,” Arabic for civil strife, the film painted Islam as violent, a religion that encouraged terrorism and provided gruesome images such as beheading and shootings in the name Islam.

While it is no secret that Islam has its extremist and violent wing, the vast majority of its practitioners are peaceful and law-abiding people. Wilders was unfair and one-dimensional in his film’s depiction of Islam. But he remained insistent.

“It is not a provocation, it is tough reality — a reality that some Muslims might not find comfortable,” Wilders — the leader of a far-right, anti-immigration Dutch political party, Party for Freedom — told the media.

His latest action comes in defiance of death threats that had been previously issued against him. Wilders has bodyguards protecting him around-the-clock.

A Dutch filmmaker, Theo Van Gogh, was killed in the streets of Amsterdam by an Islamic extremist in 2004, after he released a film critical of Islam’s treatment of women.

The Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, in reflecting his country’s open and tolerant society, struck a balanced tone in handling Wilders. “The film equates Islam with violence: we reject that interpretation,” he said. “We believe it serves no purpose other than to offend. But feeling offended must never be used as an excuse for aggression and threats.”

The problem is that the radical Islamists would not take such a measured approach. Free speech is not something they would necessarily understand. This is a cultural and civilizational clash that will pit different ideologies and beliefs against each other, with devastating consequences likely. Balkenende is right to worry that Wilders’ film will not only provoke protests in Islamic countries; Dutch interests, be they soldiers, citizens or businesses, might also face backlash or even come to harm.

So it is a tough line to walk — other cultures might not understand or accept it, but we need to protect and guarantee freedom of expression. At the same time, unfortunately, managing the repercussions such as those that could be unleashed by Wilders’ film, is also going to be a tough prospect. But if it is a principle we believe strongly enough in, we must stand by it, just as Voltaire had so aptly stated.

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It is tragic every time senseless killings make the news.

It is even sadder when it involves the long-running blood feud between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

After a lull in suicide attacks by Palestinians on Israel for almost two years, the peace was shattered today by the killing of eight Jewish seminary students in Jerusalem by a gunman believed to be Palestinian or Israeli Arab.

BBC photo

The shooting also left nine others injured, three gravely. The attacker, who was reportedly working alone, was killed on the spot by an Israeli army officer. Apparently, a little-known group calling themselves the Jalil Freedom Battalions – the Martyrs of Imad Mughniyeh and Gaza was behind the killing.

What a horrible waste of young lives this incident is. The worst thing is that it will not end here.

While families of those affected grieve, others are already demanding retaliation on the Palestinians.

The anger among the Israelis is understandable. They have already been going through a nerve-wreaking week, with the recent firing of more powerful rockets by Palestinians extremists from Gaza into Israeli towns. The Israeli army had been busy answering that by launching a raid into Gaza, resulting in over a hundred Palestinian deaths and a dangerous increase in tension.

Today’s massacre will only toughen Israeli resolve to retaliate and crush further attempts. What will follow, to the detriment of all sides, is another cycle of violence, where more deaths and sadness will result.

It is risible that the Hamas government, which is in charge of the Gaza Strip, called the shooting “heroic”.

“This is a normal response to all the Israel occupation, commission and aggression, and they [have] committed massacres inside the Gaza and West Bank – about 128 [people were] killed, 30 of them children and infants, people and elderly and [women]. So I find this is a normal response to all Israel’s occupational crimes, and waging a war against the Palestinians,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told the world unrepentantly.

And while the rest of the world sent condolences to the victims’ families and condemned the violence, Palestinians were out celebrating on the streets at the news of shooting.

When will they ever learn that their problems would not be solved by blowing themselves up or taking others’ lives?

When will they realize that violence only begets more violence and lives lost would be in vain?

With attitudes like this, there seems to be little hope in the continuation of peace talks between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Just yesterday, after talks with US Secretary of State Condolezza Rice, the two had agreed to restart peace talks that had stalled in the wake of the recent violence. Though they did not say when that might happen, that now seems extremely unlikely to be anytime soon, in the wake of today’s shooting.

The revelation that most of the terrorists detained and involved in last week’s UK and Glasgow car bombing plots being doctors put paid to the conventional wisdom that poverty and lack of education are the crucial factors that drive many a desperate young man towards extremism by blowing themselves and others up.

After all, the “biggest” terrorist of them all is Osama bin Laden, and he is no poor boy. The man comes from one of the richest families in Saudi Arabia, billionaires that are also well-connected to the Saudi royal family.

Not that the rest of the other terrorists are billionaires too, but a substantial majority of them are fairly well-educated, coming from middle-class families by and large.

Similarly, the members of the Southeast Asian arm of the al-Qaeda-connected group, Jemaah Islamiah, though halfway around the world, also had well-educated operatives, such as engineers and lecturers.

It is shocking and hard for most of us to understand why people who should theoretically be more able to reason and have more to lose, would willingly put themselves in harm’s way. But economic circumstances is a poor indicator that radicalism would take hold.

Princeton economist Alan Krueger told the Wall Street Journal that his research showed that as a group, terrorists are usually from “wealthier families than the typical person in the same age group in the societies from which they originate”.

He has a good point — most of the September 11 attackers were from relatively wealthy families. Being Saudis, they’re not your typical poor either.

Krueger and his team had also come up with other statistics to back their theory up. They found that research on 148 Palestinian suicide bombers showed that they were not from impoverished families, but were more likely to have graduated from high school than the general Palestinian population. Similar findings cropped up when they researched Hezbollah and Israeli terrorists.

More disturbingly, Mr Krueger and his team discovered that when public opinion polls were held in countries like Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey, the better-educated ones from there were the ones likelier to reply that suicide attacks against Westerners in Iraq are “justified”. Conversely, Palestinian polls demonstrate no visible difference in the opinion between the educated and uneducated about support for terrorism as a way to reach political objectives.

On the other hand, the theory that terrorists spring from poverty hardly has data to back it up. It is an attractive theory though, that most people can easily wrap their heads around. Witness the Bush administration’s statements about fighting poverty in hot spots around the world to combat terrorism.

The Wall Street Journal points out that the 9/11 Commission itself came to the conclusion that terrorism is not brought on by poverty. Instead, Mr Krueger suggests that the suppression of civil liberties and political rights are more plausible causes. That perhaps makes things more alarming, given how many countries suffer from those factors.

After constantly tightening the screw, Hamas, which now runs Gaza, has managed to get a Palestinian militant group holding BBC reporter Alan Johnston to set him free.

The Army of God had held the reporter hostage since March 12, or for nearly four months.

He was reported to be back in the BBC’s Gaza office, in good health.

Television footage showed Johnston exiting a building and entering a white car while accompanied by armed men. Johnston was handed over to the Hamas authorities.

Hamas, which beat its Palestinian rival Fatah to gain control of Gaza in June, had made freeing Johnston a top priority, vowing to “use all means to secure his life and to free him”. Two weeks ago, hopes had been running high that Johnston would be immediately released, thanks to Hamas’ insistence.

But the members of the Army of God had said they were not complying and even threatened to kill Johnston if their demand for the release of several Palestinian prisoners, some of whom are held in the UK. The Army of God even heightened fears for Johnston’s life when they showed a video of the reporter with an explosives belt strapped onto him. They had also released other videos of Johnston.

The BBC reports that on Monday, Hamas security forces had detained members of the Army of God in Gaza.

“The arrests were carried out after all negotiation attempts… failed to free the abducted journalist,” the Hamas-run interior ministry said in a statement. “The arrests are targeting figures who were involved in the abduction of the journalist.”

The BBC has put an online petition on its website, urging people to sign it for Johnston’s freedom.

Salman Rushdie is one of the most sublime authors in the English language.

So no one should be surprised that he is granted a knighthood to honor his considerable literary achievements.

The British ought to stick to their guns on this one and refuse to give in to blackmail, even as Islamist elements in Pakistan and Iran are protesting their rage and demanding a retraction of the knighthood. The UK government is sovereign and has every right to knight whomever it chooses, not least Rushdie, because of his literary accomplishments but also for his moral courage to write exactly what he thought and for braving the fatwa issued by ayatollahs for his death for a decade. The fatwa was in response to his book The Satanic Verses, which Muslims had claimed is blasphemous.

While Muslims have a right to protest, some of their more extreme comments are unlikely to gain sympathy, but perhaps more fear, suspicion and revulsion across the world.

What’s more disturbing is that a Pakistani minister had actually said Rushdie’s knighting is “justification” for suicide bomb attacks and is the root cause of terrorism.

“If somebody has to attack by strapping bombs to his body to protect the honor of the Prophet then it is justified,” Pakistan’s religious affairs minister told the National Assembly. He went as far as to suggest that Pakistan and other Muslim countries ought to suspend ties with the UK if the knighthood was not retracted.

Iranian officials have issued similarly threatening and hardline threats to Rushdie’s life.

Another radical group, the Organization to Commemorate Martyrs of the Muslim World, even offered Rushdie’s successful assassin a $150,000 reward.

It’s bad enough when fringe groups like that get all hysterical over what they perceive are the smallest slights, but when government officials do so too, that’s downright frightening.

This is a serious step back for Islam and moderate Muslims. These extremists hijack the agenda and the religion, ruining things for the majority of moderate Muslim practitioners that are progressive and tolerant. Senseless calls for murder is not going to help Islam’s image anytime soon and would instead entrench stereotypes of its being radical, backward, and violent. This troubling standard of not only suppressing freedom of expression but also threatening to kill others for having a difference of opinion is deeply troubling, even barbaric.

There should be no justification whatsoever for senseless and indiscriminate murder, especially of innocent lives who might be lost should the attack be carried out by a suicide bomber. Until radical Muslims start respecting the beliefs and lives of others, there is no way they would gain respect.

At the very least, we can say that abducted BBC reporter Alan Johnston is probably still alive.

His kidnappers, the Army of Islam, have released online a videotape of the Gaza-based reporter, who went missing in early March.

Claiming to be in good health and that his kidnappers have been treating him well, Johnston was dressed reminiscent of the detainees of Guantanamo Bay in a bright orange shirt, looking thin.

More distressingly, Johnson was most likely compelled to make the case for the plight of the Palestinians, condemn the war in Iraq, and denounce the situation in Afganistan.

And in what’s sure to cause deeper anguish for his family, Johnston started to address his family on tape but was cut off.

The British government was united in their condemnation of Johnston’s abduction, calling for his immediate release while adding that his captivity doesn’t help the Palestinian cause.

His kidnappers had demanded the release of Abu Qatada, a Palestinian-born Islamic cleric suspected of having close ties to al-Qaeda and is under the UK government’s detention as a threat to national security.

The BBC said that it was not ascertained when the video was made and what kind of conditions Johnston was in.

For now, let’s hope he is still alive and well, with the right channels working hard to ensure he is freed at the soonest.

See the Alan Johnston video here.

Perhaps Samuel Huntington was right after all.

The clash of civilizations theory he espoused a decade ago is once again coming to the forefront.

Put aside the quarrel with Al-Qaeda and the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli clashes, new theatres proving Huntington’s theory that nations are seized with increasing threats of violence and conflict along religious/ cultural fault lines continually appear.

Witness the struggle in doggedly neutral Switzerland, against the building of minarets by its Muslim citizens.

The right-wing Swiss People’s Party is gathering surprisingly large numbers as it drums up support for the ban against the construction of minarets, with claims that minarets are not essential for worship, but act as symbols of Islamic law, making them incompatible with Switzerland’s legal system, the BBC reports.

The party is taking it further, hoping to garner enough signatures to eventually make it into a national referendum which would be binding.

“We don’t have anything against Muslims,” Oskar Freysinger, a member of parliament for the Swiss People’s Party, told the BBC. “But we don’t want minarets. The minaret is a symbol of a political and aggressive Islam, it’s a symbol of Islamic law. The minute you have minarets in Europe it means Islam will have taken over.”

More level-headed Swiss politicians have spoken out against the Swiss People Party’s initiative, but public opinion looks favorable towards the Swiss People Party, as polls showed 43 per cent of the Swiss favoring a minarets ban and objections have put paid to plans to build minarets in some cities.

In Malaysia, there’s religious persecution of a different stroke, as a Muslim-born woman takes her case to the land’s highest courts in her fight for the right to convert to Christianity. The case could bring to the surface Malaysia’s uneasy balance between the different races and religions, and even set a precedent for more converts from Islam to step forward. This in a place where leaving Islam is considered apostasy, the Washington Post writes.

If the woman, who has faced death threats, lost her job and whose case triggered protests, loses her appeal and persists in being recognized as a Christian, she could face apostasy charges, which carries a possible jail sentence.

Her case is testing Muslim-majority Malaysia’s very identity — whether it is a moderate Islamic state or prefers to be a secular state which guarantees religious freedom. Opponents see it as an impudent challenge of Islam’s position in Malaysia.

But religion may also have the power to make things better for some people, particularly those in India hoping to escape the condemnation of the country’s rigid caste system. Thousands of low-caste Indians and those from nomadic tribes converted to Buddhism recently in a mass conversion ceremony. Perhaps life will be better for these people, who would have been confined to a life of discrimination and deprivation under the Hindu caste system.

Taking the conversion route has been controversial in Indian society, but it has been a way for those of the lowest castes to obtain education and get jobs other than menial labor.

Huntington’s theories might have seemed overly alarmist and simplistic back then, but he might not have been hitting too far off the mark, and in fact have been explaining through a rather coherent model, judging by the tensions that our world is going through now.