Verily mankind is ungrateful

There is something wrong with me at the moment. I don’t know what it is, but my emotions are heightened, I am on edge, easily upset and completely inconsistent. I have been like this for two months now, swinging between the strangest misery and confused folly. The misery reveals itself in the tears that well up for no apparent reason from the tiniest seed. The folly in the quick humour which rises rapidly and then dies. I seem to be dissatisfied with myself. My heart aches, feeling heavy in my chest. On my return from Turkey I quizzed myself about my unhappiness and decided that I could change it by returning to the Smythian keyboard and reignite my “Copious Footnotes”. This lasted barely two weeks. It was followed by a yearning to start a cottage-industry publishing house called “The Othello Press”. I don’t know if this will lead anywhere. Then there was the “Blogistan” project, to which I contributed five articles before hurriedly retracting four of them again, turning my back on the site because of the melancholy which overcomes me. It is all ups and downs, backwards and forwards, proposals and withdrawals. At work I want to be a writer, then a graphic designer, next an IT trainer, then a communications officer; and now, just as I’m offered an interview for the latter, I’m resigned once more to my role. Perhaps tomorrow will bring a better day; maybe it will be good for me down the line. Perhaps it is not so bad.

Verily mankind is ungrateful. My first job after university was very comfortable. I earned a better salary then that I ever have since. It was located on a country estate outside Maidenhead, in converted stables between a lovely walled garden and a grand mansion with manicured grounds. The Chairman liked his fast cars but he was generous to us, keeping the fridge stocked up every week to provide his staff with free lunch. For some reason, though, I was dissatisfied. Dissatisfied despite a great wage for the simplest of graphic design work.

When the company downsized after the slump in the market following the attacks on the United States in September 2001 and I was out of a job, I started up my own business offering publishing services. This was a situation where I was in the position to do what I most love: creating beautiful books. Alas I was dissatisfied once more, even though I was given the opportunity to typeset challenging works such as “The History of the Qur’anic Text”. There had to be something better, I told myself, and so I moved onto new ground. I ended up as Office Manager in a busy training department. I was responsible for a team of administrators, got to produce newsletters and a directory of courses, develop the intranet and do many interesting things. Yet again I became dissatisfied and so the cycle started again.

What is it that drives me over the edge again and again? Why is it that I am never satisfied with what I have? Is my situation not better than the poor soul who sets up his table on a bridge over the Bosporus every evening in Istanbul to sell ice cold, bright yellow lemonade to hot and tired commuters? Indeed, is my situation not better than those dry, scorching days I spent administering an internet café in the summer of 2003, with the fumes of traffic numbing my brain? Or the days spent serving prickly Thai and unsophisticated Lebanese cuisine to three hundred customers over lunchtime off Berkley Square?

Perhaps it is pride. “I have an MPhil, you know?” Pride, which makes me think that the job I am doing is never good enough. “I don’t need an MPhil to do this job, do I?” Pride which gets in the way of an honest day’s work, making it seem worthless and you worthless as a result. I think it is. I think I am stumbling away from a path I once knew when I was younger and more devoted to treating a lump of flesh beneath my ribs.

One of the first books I was given to read when I became Muslim in 1998 was “The Purification of the Soul”. I think it is time that I returned to this work and others like it, recognising what it is that is creating this unease. My soul has been neglected as the smog and noise of a violent and political world obscure the reality of faith. Oh my Lord, put comfort back into my heart and do not let me die other than one who has earned Your pleasure. Take away this heaviness and ache in my chest and replace it with lightness and appreciation of the sweetness of all of Your blessings. Oh my Lord, let me return to You with a good heart. Amin.

The complexities of censorship

Following my recent post ‘To blog or not to blog?’ some additional complexities surrounding the question of censorship occurred to me. Namely the question of censorship in the contemporary Muslim world and, secondly, how freedom of speech plays against the Islamic emphasis on the preservation of knowledge (think of the science of isnad verification, for example). In accepting that Islamic Scholars are the guardians of our religion, we implicitly reject those who speak without authority in matters relating to the Qur’an and Sunnah. In reality, today such censorship hardly exists, hence the confusion we encounter. Nevertheless, I would like to explore these two issues more.

Eickelman and Anderson note in their article ‘Publishing in Muslim countries: Less censorship, new audiences and rise of the “Islamic” book’ that liberal theorist who rejoice at the development of pluralism in Muslim countries “must still be troubled by the seeming intolerance and absolutism of some expressions of religious and political beliefs and values.” [Eickelman, D.F. and Anderson, J.W. (1997) ‘Publishing in Muslim countries: less censorship, new audiences and rise of the “Islamic” book’ in LOGOS (London: Whurr Publishers Ltd.) 8/4 pp.192-198].

While it is true that Islam has a political element, it is not true to say that the political situations present in the contemporary Muslim world derive particularly from Islam. Secularism and Nationalism are well established in most Muslim countries, and ideologies such as Marxism and liberalism continue to compete with Islam in their effort to shape Muslim societies. Whilst studying in Scotland an Algerian student expressed his amazement to me when he discovered the large number of Muslim publications in the University’s prayer room, for such works were officially banned by his native government. Similarly, whilst researching the Muslim publishing industry five years ago, the Lebanese publisher Dar Al Kotob Al Ilmiyah explained that the production of a single Islamic book disapproved of by a government in a Muslim country has the potential to jeopardise all of a publisher’s sales in that country.

In many countries with Muslim majorities freedom of expression is severely limited, although, as Eickleman and Anderson note, the “globalization of media is blurring the boundaries between local, regional and international perspectives and between elite and popular cultures.” The result, they argue, is pluralism in political and religious views, despite the attempts of authorities to limit what is said in public. Initially the invention of desktop publishing (DTP) and the photocopier was seen to be contributing to growing pluralism, for individuals could easily work outside the sphere of government regulation. The same would be true to some degree in the proliferation of weblogs and websites today. Change is therefore evident in many countries. Where words and phrases with religious connotations were once eliminated from public discourse in Turkey, for example, they are now reappearing. On the other hand, censorship is far from a thing of the past. According to Eickelman and Anderson (writing in 1997), some Gulf States have three censorship organisations, through which any one has the power to ban an import or to alter a word. A friend has told me that even the works of Al-Ghazali is banned in Saudi Arabia; can this really be true?

According to the human rights organisation, Article 19, “The UN Declaration on Religious Intolerance (1981) recognizes that an important aspect of religious freedom is the ability to propagate the dogma, aims or beliefs of a religion.” [Article 19 (1991) Information, Freedom and Censorship World Report (London: Library Association Publishing)] If a government insists that the contents of teaching material must conform to the political or religious opinion it endorses, this has the potential to affect religious minorities, political dissenters and non-religious groups. Eickelman and Anderson view the emphasis on authoritative Islamic teachings as a kind of privatised censorship. They write:

“Traditionally educated religious scholars, like the beneficiaries of elite education, see a threat in popular books and pamphlets which encourage intolerance, while those from below resent elite efforts at “guidance,” which they see as unjustified censorship or control.”

It is hard to strike a balance between the two views brought up here. In terms of expressions of political dissent, holding leaders to account is encouraged in Islam. In early Islamic history, Muslims leaders enjoined the people to speak out if they considered them to be behaving inappropriately. Yet preservation of sound knowledge has always been key in the Islamic tradition and therefore a form of censorship must exist on the part of Muslim scholars; the alternative is a free reading of Islam that has the potential to lead to the extremism we see today (no traditional scholar has ever sanctioned terrorism). Of this dielma, Rosenthal wrote:

“It’s insistence upon “knowledge” has no doubt made medieval Muslim civilization one of great scholarly and scientific productivity, and through it, Muslim civilization made its most lasting contribution to mankind. “Knowledge” as its centre also hardened civilization and made it impervious to anything that did not fall within its view of what constituted acceptable knowledge.” [Rosenthal, F. (1970) Knowledge Triumphant: The Concept of Knowledge in Medieval Islam (Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill)]

As we can see, the question of censorship within Muslim society is complex. In my previous posting, I argued that the Islamic worldview attaches responsibilities to freedom of expression. While I spoke of the restrictive responsibilities in that article, it could also be argued that we have a duty to express ourselves freely when it is for the common good. In a way, though, this was the gist of my previous article entitled ‘A very poor show.’

To blog or not to blog?

Our blessed Prophet said, "He who truly believes in God and the Last Day should speak good or keep silent." For those of us who love to write, the implications of this are clear. To "Blog" brings with it responsibilities. Although I don't consider myself a "Blogger" – simply a writer who finds the dynamic publishing mechanism of blogging software a really useful tool, a step on from FTP I used four years ago and DTP before that* – this question exercises me constantly. I have a back catalogue spanning nine years on my own site, yet it contains barely one hundred items; were I a real blogger I would have at least three thousand. The command to "speak good" must equally apply to all forms of communication.

I began thinking about this again last night when I read some of the comments under a post on a group blog known as Blogistan. Some visitors object to Blogistan's editorial policy, which -- not unlike traditional media -- does not post all comments submitted. Spam, abuse, insults and general nonsense are not published; in particular the forum does not accept attacks on Islam. Some people believe that because a commenting tool exists, it must be free to be used however one chooses. As an individual trained to work within the boundaries of an editorial process I find this belief difficult to reconcile. As a Muslim, furthermore, I am conscious that in the Islamic worldview a word is an act, just as to walk, run or eat is an act. Gai Eaton made this point quite clearly in his book, Islam and the Destiny of Man:

"In whatever society we may live, our actions are constrained in the public interest and, in Europe and America during the present century, these constraints have multiplied so rapidly that our ancestors, even a hundred years ago, might have found life almost intolerable. The Muslim may reasonably ask how it is that we accept this vast and oppressive network of laws and regulations while, at the same time, removing all constraints from one of the most potent forms of action; the spoken or written word." [Eaton, G. (1998) Islam and the Destiny of Man (Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society)]

A book, he points out, can easily become the indirect cause of genocide, to take an extreme but not unreasonable example. Hence, "He who truly believes in God and the Last Day should speak good or keep silent." Yet this viewpoint is not even exclusively Islamic – freedom was understood by Kant, for example, as the freedom to do good, rather than the freedom to do anything as it now stands. To go further, a distinction can be drawn between freedom and rights. Although Islam grants the individual the freedom to say anything, it does not grant him or her the right to slander, backbite or lie (in fact these are reprehensible sins). Those who believe that freedom of expression entails the freedom to express anything will naturally accuse Islam of promoting censorship. However there is nothing that prevents an individual from holding a personal opinion. Indeed the difference of opinion of scholars is well known and the majority of Muslims follow one of four schools of law, which differ on a number of points regarding practice.

I believe that as Muslims writing on a Muslim site there is no reason to apologise for nothing other than working within well-established boundaries. Those whose interpretation of freedom of speech is different from our own are by no means limited in the opportunity to contribute freely elsewhere. Nor shall we prevent them from doing so. The freedom of opinion and expression is revered in Western culture as a fundamental human right; a position arrived at as a result of number of circumstances in European history.

Robert Shackelton, writing in Censure and Censorship: Impediments to Free Publication in the Age of Enlightenment, uses the example of the Sorbonne at a time when it was "glorifying in its role as custodian of Catholic orthordoxy." The ecclesiastic, Abbé de Prades, submitted a thesis for the degree of licentiate in theology, in which he proposed various controversial ideas including the notion that religion is no more than a further development of natural law. The examiners of the Faculty of Theology approved his thesis by mistake so that it was seen as approving "dangerous and apparently anti-Christian doctrines." As a result, the Sorbonne issued a censure on the thesis, condemning it as "false, temerarious, injurious to Catholic theologians, scandalous, evilly sounding, offensive to pious ears, erroneous, blasphemous, heretical, favouring materialism, pernicious to society and public tranquillity." Stripped of his degrees and diocesan, and facing arrest, the Abbé fled to Prussia. [Shackelton, R. (1975) Censure and Censorship: Impediments to Free Publication in the Age of Enlightenment (Austin: The University of Texas at Austin)]

It is, of course, understandable that censure and censorship are now unpopular notions. Censorship is commonly defined as "the examination of a text before publication, by someone in authority, with a view to ascertaining its fitness to appear," and censure as "the examination of a text, after publication, with a view to deciding whether it had been fit to appear." Both concepts are restrictive. Article nineteen of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that, "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information through any media regardless of frontiers." [Article 19 (1991) Information, Freedom and Censorship World Report (London: Library Association Publishing)]

Nonetheless, in advocating freedom of opinion and expression, it is recognised in English and other international Law that certain limits may be placed on the freedom of expression in certain circumstances, though not on the freedom to hold opinions. The most common reason given for censorship is the need to protect the rights of others, as in defamation, protection of reputation and privacy. National security also constitutes a justification for censorship, along with sedition, public interest, public health, public morals, obscenity, public order, prevention of violence, racism, sexism and religious intolerance.

I firmly believe that the editor of Blogistan is right to put constraints on what may be published on his forum. As a would-be contributor myself I know that I am bound by the ground rules he set out at the start and I accept this just as I would were I to write for traditional media (read the submission notes provided by any major publisher if you doubt this). Old fashioned as I may be, I strongly believe that every author needs an editor.

* While I still have passion for creating the beautiful typeset page, it is time-consuming and expensive; to publish online is instantaneous and simple.

A very poor show

In general I enjoy listening to programmes on BBC Radio 4. I don’t own a TV and only buy a newspaper about twice a month (usually The Independent, for my sins), so the radio is my main source when keeping abreast of current affairs. A pretty good job it does too: not least Start the Week for literature and the arts, but also the nature, politics, ethics and technology programmes.

Every so often, however, you hear a programme that makes you wonder what has happened to British “quality” journalism. I heard one such programme on Saturday night (15/10/05) entitled A War Against Prejudice, repeating an edition broadcast earlier in the week. The focus of this programme was a Jewish organisation known as the Community Security Trust and its alleged role in exaggerating claims of anti-Semitism in British society. I must confess that I know very little about either subject, but it seemed quite clear to me as an outsider – an English Muslim of Anglican stock -- that the programme had been made with preconceived ideas. Listening to this documentary it was impossible to ignore that feeling inside, that the programme maker had begun with a conclusion and had proceeded to build his case around it.

When Gerry Northam interviewed members of the Jewish community – and Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain – who would lend support to his thesis, he used blatantly leading questions. By contrast, when he interviewed Melanie Philips – whose frequent anti-Muslim views turned me away from listening to The Moral Maze – he probed her fear of anti-Semitism without the impartiality one would expect of a journalist. When Philips recounted her experience of a woman telling her that she “hated the Jews, because of the way they treated the Palestinians”, the journalist embarrassingly offered his own explanations for this. Why?

This is not to argue that the premise of the programme was incorrect; two rabbis and a Jewish sociologist lent some support to his case, if not entirely voluntarily (although the programme did make the Community Security Trust sound like a secretive organisation akin to the BNP, but with links to the Metropolitan Police a better likeness would probably be the Muslim Council of Britain, albeit a more advanced version). Instead, my complaint centres entirely on what looked liked a most imbalanced form of journalism.

What concerns me is that we are likely to turn a blind eye to this sort of journalism – for 1) it does not affect our community and 2) it does affect someone we don’t like very much. Yet as a community that is commanded to speak the truth even if it is against our self, is this the right attitude? I wonder if we would find more success in our campaigns against distorted media presentation of Muslim issues if our own vision were not so closed. If our mission is to fulfil the role of being a mercy for mankind, is it not time that we put aside the dreadful claim to be the chosen people that has crept into our communities and instead stand up as witnesses to the truth?


It was back to business as usual on BBC Radio 4 yesterday afternoon, with Libby Purves chairing an excellent discussion in the last fifteen minutes of The Learning Curve on the effect the proposed Anti-Terror Legislation may have on Universities. Well worth a listen.
Quite separately, does "PM", the title of their rush-hour news-hour, stand for "Permanent Moan"?
Posted by: The Neurocentric October 19, 2005 07:23 AM

Just found your excellent site. Whilst being an unbeliever I have immense respect for sincerely devout believers of all religions. You are reflecting the side of Islam that is sorely missed in our media. Most of my Moslem freinds and colleagues share the "moderate" (for want of a better word) interpretations of Islam you are promoting - more power to your elbow! However on the specific issue of Anti-Semitism in Moslem communities, I am often disturbed by the willingness of some Moslem friends to use offensice language about Jews. I have also noticed also a tendency to believe in "conspiracy theories" about "Jewish Control of America". The evils committed against Palastinians are obviously at the root of this as is the American incabability to criticise israel. But this does not justify some of the Anti-semitism that I hear (generally from Pashto speaking Moslems- so maybe this is a cultural thing), who confuse Jewishness with Right Wing Zionism. We need to see a wideranging and open debate on this.
Posted by: chris October 19, 2005 09:52 AM

"I don’t own a TV and only buy a newspaper about twice a month (usually The Independent, for my sins), so the radio is my main source when keeping abreast of current affairs." You what? How the hell can you be a blogger and be so cut off from all that information?!? I assume you must read some online news right?
Posted by: leon October 19, 2005 01:44 PM

Leon, you're right of course. Do I have to do the backtrack thing (someone will have to explain it to me if I do)? Yes, I browse BBC online when I get to work at 8am every day and (I forgot about this) I watch a wide range of news programmes on Broadband via the wwiTV portal (http://mediahopper.com/portal.htm). A slight oversight, but you have to make allowances - it's Ramadan, we're fasting, low blood sugar. In any case, you get the drift - I listen to Radio 4 an awful lot. Why is it the afternoon play is always really good when I'm late coming back from my lunch break? I could sit in the car park all day.
Posted by: The Neurocentric October 19, 2005 05:22 PM

Hi Chris, thanks for your feedback, tho I certainly wouldn't categorise myself as a devout believer. Personally I dislike the term "Anti-Semitism" as "Racism" would do, although (note the contradiction) I always thought Muslims (as followers of a Semitic religion) would have been better cottoning onto this phrase than coining "Islamophobia" -- but there we are. In any case, I wouldn't deny that the tendency you mention exists in the Muslim community. I asked a Spanish Muslim about this when I was a new Muslim about seven years ago; his view was that it is a recent phenomenon which has its roots in colonialism and the Israel-Palestine problem, and is not historical.
But there is another thing to consider. The Islamic narrative insists that the Children of Israel were Muslims, thus much is said about them in the Qur'an which recounts tales of those who went before us in order that we might reflect and not repeat past errors (alas we fail to understand). It is often said that such passages are "Anti-Semitic" -- I think contemporary Muslims often miss the point when they lament "Islamophobia" -- we now fulfil the role that the Children of Israel fulfilled before us. We wouldn't call the Qur'an "Islamophobic" of course - sadly, we just ignore it instead.
Posted by: The Neurocentric October 19, 2005 06:03 PM

I regret that it is not true that Anti-Semitism is caused mostly by the Palestinian-Israeli situation. When working in the Gulf some years ago someone asked a Syrian colleague (a friend of ours) why he did not trust the Israelis. He gave an answer which I did not expect-"because the Jews of Medina did not keep their covenant with the Prophet." I have heard this many times since. There is something more deep-seated than the easy Palestine explanation here. The publication of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" in the Arab World-the making and broadcasting widely of "Horseman Without A Horse" based on this forgery, plus all the conspiracy theories about how the Jews run everything show quite clealy that there is a deep seated problem about accepting an Israeli Jewish state in the middle of the Muslim World. Posted by: Frank October 19, 2005 09:46 PM

On a related topic does anyone else feel uneasy about the nature of the "anti-semitism discourse"? It seems to be presented more as a genetic defect than a prejudice. For example calling it "the oldest hatred" seems to imply something primordial about it. Most significantly of course is the fact that it's given a seperate title whereas hated towards all other races is just classed as racism. Another worrying aspect is that the target of the "anti-semitism discourse" in the west is mainly muslims and people on the Left in countries like France, Britain and Germany. In Russia and Ukraine you've got members of the governments there making openly anti-jewish remarks yet places like that come far down on the list of the most anti-semitic places.
Posted by: Shamilaskov October 19, 2005 10:17 PM

My grandmother - who is Anglican - when reconciling herself to the fact that I am Muslim recalled that she had been told as a child not trust Jews and Roman Catholics; but, she said, when she finally met both a Jew and a Roman Catholic they were the nicest people she had ever met. She told me, despite all the things people say about Muslims my Muslim friends were absolutely lovely. Prejudice comes in all forms and sometimes it's because people isolate themselves that it persists.
Posted by: The Neurocentric October 20, 2005 05:16 PM