Posts Tagged ‘Fatema Mernissi’
Global Capital defines Time
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 20, 2010
New Capitalism redefines Time
The dividing line between present and future is invisible for the capitalist spirit: the past is passive and inefficacious to revert to and the future is mobile and evolving. I saw an old American movie a couple of days ago: a customer is checking a Cadillac and asks the salesman: “Is it this year’s model?” and the dealer to reply: “This is next year model you are sitting in”
Capitalism captured the western cultural guiding rod in the last century: Time was no longer the enemy to mankind and time should be considered as the main dependent factor when studying nature, life, evolution, and development. Space, temperature, climate, and the multitude of other independent factors were meant to explaining time. Time (and what correspond to time such as speed, rate, and turnover) is a directive God, the one notion that essentially defines all the other phenomena in the universe. Time and timeline are the measuring guideline to all human activities: work, distances, history, space, production, marketing, investment, liquidity, and budget. All other societies had to keep up with capitalism rhythm of what became the standard terminology and behavioral routines.
Power is no longer essentially related to borders, raw materials, size of a nation, or even larger armies. Power is rate of return, turnover rate, and quickness in planning and starting production; power is quickness in distribution and consumption, quickness in gathering information and timely intelligence, quickness in analyzing and interpreting data, and quickness in relaying and disseminating information and intelligence. Power is how Time is tamed and used as the most potent ally and tool. Power is how to discover the best method to control and manage Time.
Oil, as a raw material, is no longer an intrinsic power; the value of oil is how quickly reserves are located, excavated, drilled, produced, refined, distributed, and consumed. Geopolitics, as a political power status, has changed its laws into chrono-politics for the flow of signals, dissemination of intelligence, and turnover of fundamental research into applied sciences.
Multinationals that represent the spirit of capitalism have tamed the most potent power tool: Time. Multinationals have set the rules of the game on how to compute, evaluate, account, and transform liquidity into ready investment; on how to change the concept of interest to periods of computing it; on how profit is defined as turnover rate of products and services. Multinationals have set the rules of how to do business, how to think business, and how to dominate with other people’s money and raw materials.
You cannot fight and win an enemy who adopted and tamed Time as its ultimate potent God while your arsenal is still limited to inert space and your notion of time is reversed toward the dead past, a past that is incorrectly read and synthesized.
It does not mean that capitalism cannot be defeated the way it is practiced as rules of the game, but in the first phase you need to get trained to capitalism efficacious arsenal and then insert other dimensions to reform and transform the current ideology of capitalism. The new civilization capable to counter the enemy has to work toward a more viable quality of life such as earth sustainable ethics, eco-ethics, quality time to knowing yourself, quality time to listen intently to your communicator, quality time to focus on reading books relevant to man emotional development, and respect of the ancestors.
Most important to countering the enemy is learning to reserve peaceful time to reading the past without the need to superimpose your current obsessions and difficulties in order to interpret the past correctly; it means not to tend to finding mythical solutions in the past that do not correspond to current realities: the fainting fits in reviewing the past is one of the magical behaviors because we mostly fail to read correctly our traditions and history.
In order to endeavor reading the past we first must feel comfortable and well rooted in our present. It is important to read the past as a hobby in hours of distractions; otherwise, we end up projecting our current problems on ancient texts which distort proper focus on the initial content and context of the texts. I am reminded of a saying by Teddy Goldsmith (1928-2009): “We can destroy Earth without violating a single law: it is illegal to protect nature!” I wonder how a volcano in Iceland can disturb global economy; can finance remedy to the real economical problems?
Note 1: An article issued in April 1st, forecasted that time is going decimal; the day will be of 10 hours, the hour 100 minutes, and the minutes 100 seconds. It might be a lie today but multinationals are very interested that an hour be of 100 minutes and, especially, a minute be of 100 seconds.
Note 2: The Moroccan author, Mohammad Jaberi’s “We and our heritage” criticized Moslem societies and imputed to the Western civilization the potent usage of time as its directive for modernization. Fatema Mernissi, in her French book “The political Harem”, relied on the Mohammad Jaberi’s concept. I thought to redirect the topic to a more specific ideological/economics concept that is more adequate to describing the trend in the last century: Western nations were very much attached to nationalism and still are in many instances.
What changed between 1991 and 2003 Iraq invasions? (Apr. 3, 2010)
The Morocco author Fatema Mernissi wrote in 1991 “Islam and democracy” after the first invasion of Iraq by President Bush the father or senior.
In 2002, she wrote an introduction to the English edition.
In 2010, the French editor Albin Michel asked Mernissi a fresh introduction to the updated French edition.
Mernissi suggested that the English introduction should be fine and Michel replied: “Do you think that nothing happened between 2002 and 2010 that young Europeans might be interested in knowing?”
After a good night sleep Mernissi realized that among the many changes, apart that Islamic/Arabic youth are double the Western rate, one change stands out grandly: In 1991, the Arabs were terrified of Western supremacy in technology (smart bombs for example that CNN kept showing their devastating effects in collateral damages on civilians);
in 2003 invasion it was clear that the American and British soldiers were the most scared of Islam virulence. Mainly, Islamic/Arab States had acquired the numeric information technology for disseminating instant news in sound, pictures, and videos and had begun rational communication discussions (jadal) on points and counter points to the benefit of every Arab/Moslems living in European States and the USA.
The unilateral monopoly in the diffusion and dissemination of information and “intelligence” was eroded: Moslems and Arabs could now enjoy 36 satellite channels broadcasting everywhere, including the most popular Al Jazeera channel that even the Western Medias watched for current and impartial news. Moslems in China were able to keep up with the rest of Islamic World events.
This information victory scared the Western civilization after it realized that the new Islamic/Arabic generations are no longer attuned to their local monopoly Medias run by dictators and monarchs: it is internet age and youth want changes and to discourse rationally. In 1991, Arabs had practically the CNN to cover the war in Iraq as direct source of information and it was biased toward showing the effects of “smart bombs” and Iraqi soldiers being shoveled alive under in the dune bunkers. Arab people got familiar with the term “collateral damages” and CNN failed to inform on the casualties. In 2003, Arab/Moslem masses had Al Jazeera channel to cover the war among 32 other satellite channels viewed for free.
It is estimated that by 2012, Islamic/Arab States will have over 1,200 free channels as option for the world to watch information and discussion sessions.
For example, since 1948, Israel has devoured all Palestine and waged countless major pre-emptive wars and the Arab masses had to rely on American Medias for totally biased information; the pickiest watchers occasionally selected the BBC. Things have changed in this numeric information age. In 2003,
Al Jazeera was offering as bonuses well targeted discussion panels with many foreign figures. For example, in 2001 and before the September attack on the Twin Towers, Al Jazeera ridiculed Taliban for bombing the ancient giant Buddhist idols in Bamyan (Afghanistan) while Richard Keller of the giant oil multinational UNOCAL was proclaiming “Taliban is good thing for us”
Western humanists grabbed the successes of the Islamic/Arabic satellite channels to become regular guest stars. For example, Dany Schechter of “Plunder: Investigating our economic calamity and the subprime scandal”; Adam Hochschild of “Burry the chains: Prophets and rebels in the fight to liberal”; and Chris Hedges of “War is a force that gives us meaning” are regular guests on Arab satellite channels.
Most ironic, it is the USA and a few European States that have been pressuring the obscurantist Arabic State dictators and monarchies to suppressing freedom of opinions and to shut down “controversial” Arabic channels. In France a few city mayors ordered Arabic channels banned for dissemination because the Arabs and Moslems living in these cities were hooked to Arabic channels and their mind being “poisoned” away from France patriotic indoctrination and inclusion programs.
Democracy in Islam: What kinds?
Posted by: adonis49 on: March 23, 2010
Democracy in Islam: What kinds? (Mar. 23, 2010)
A little history to preparing the ground for understanding whether the appreciation of modern kinds of democracy is within Moslem traditions and customs. The third caliph of the Moslems, Othman Bin Affan, started his reign well. The pressures from Mecca oligarchic clans in his Quraich tribe encouraged Othman to appointing most governors and high posts officials from his own clan of Umayyad. Thus, discontent grew drastically; to make things worse, Othman built a lavish Palace in Medina (less than 25 years after the Prophet death in this city where he was buried). Aicha (the youngest and most beloved of spouses) got wind that the political climate is deteriorating and opted not to intervene politically at this junction and gave the excuse of going on pilgrimage to Mecca: People knew that she didn’t appreciate the fraudulent lies that this caliph introduced to the official Koran.
While in Mecca, angry mob coming from Basra (Iraq) entered the palace and assassinated Othman. Aicha demanded from the newly designated Caliph Ali Bin Abi Taleb to put the assassins to trial but Ali didn’t react immediately. While in Mecca, Aicha was approached by many Quraichi leaders such as Talhat and Zubeir (from the tribes of Othman); they managed to incite Aicha to take the lead and to march against Ali.
Aicha emulated the same tactics as the Prophet did before any military excursion: She drummed up support in the city of Bassora, negotiated with notables, explained the reasons of her dangerous move (it was to be the first civil war in Islam) and she opened free discussions for people to express their opinions in the mosque. Mosques were the proper locations for open discussions under the protection of Allah. A young man took the podium and talked. He said:
“You the immigrants (converts to Islam who moved from Mecca to Medina); it is true that you were the first to embrace Islam. But everyone later received the same privilege. After the prophet death (632 AC) you have designated a man among you (first caliph Abu Bakr) to become the first successor; we the common Moslems were not consulted. Again, you the elite have met in council (Shawra) and designated the second Caliph (Omar bin al Khattab) and we were not asked our opinion. You voted for the third Caliph (Othman Bin Affan) without our input; you didn’t like Othman after 13 years of ruling us and you assassinated him. You again designated Ali for fourth caliph and the common Moslems were not invited to extend their opinions and preferences. Now you don’t like Ali. What are you reproaching him for? Why have you decided to fight him by the sword? Has he done any reprehensible acts? Is his election illegal, illicit or fraudulent? Tell us why you want us to start a civil war (fitna)? You have got to surely convince us to join the battle. Tell us what it is all about? Why are fighting?” Unfortunately, this young man ended paying his life for expressing his bold opinion and position
What would generally be called Sunni Moslems were those who preferred peace and stability instead of deciding for civil wars to changing wrong doings. The Shiaa Moslems were categorized as those who abided by the Hadith injunction “The one who witness a reprehensible situation and injustice (al munkar) and does not try to prevent it and change the situation will encounter Divine punishment”
Paradoxically, in the battle of “The Camel”, the first Islam civil war, the Sunnis backed Ali (it was a reasonable position since Ali was just in his pronouncements ) and the Shiaa backed Aicha. Caliphate Ali destroyed the unprofessional troops lead by Aicha: 13, 000 Moslems perished in that battle. Ali spent many days in the battle field burying the dead from both sides. Aicha was sent back to Medina where she kept her residence and focused her energy on gathering all of the Prophet’s sourats and verses and was the main pole for clarifications on legal issues and attacking the countless fraudulent Hadith (what the Prophet had said).
It was after the defeat of Aicha that Abu Bakra, a Moslem who was whipped by the second Caliph Omar for calumny, resumed his misogynist behavior and claimed hearing this Hadith from the Prophet Muhammad: “No prosperity for any society can come when a woman is in command.” The next phase in Islam political structure was based on hereditary successions of the Caliphate with all the power that any monarch could dream of.
Note: Fatema Mernissi in her book “The political Harem” re-examined the mostly fraudulent Hadith related to women and male misogyny. Bukhara catalogued the Hadith and kept only 7275 as potentially valid (sahih) out of 600, 000 Hadith recognized as plainly fraudulent.
Capitalism redefines Time
Posted by: adonis49 on: March 22, 2010
Capitalism redefines Time; (Mar. 21, 2010)
The dividing line between present and future is invisible for the capitalist spirit: the past is passive and inefficacious to revert to and the future is mobile and evolving. I saw an old American movie a couple days ago: a customer is checking a Cadillac and asks the salesman: “Is it this year model?” and the dealer to reply: “This is next year model you are sitting in”
Capitalism captured the western cultural guiding rod in the last century: Time was no longer the enemy to mankind and time should be considered as the main dependent variable when studying nature, life, evolution, and development while space, temperature, climate, and the multitude of other independent factors were meant to explaining time. Time (and what correspond to time such as speed, rate, and turnover) is a directive God, the one notion that essentially defines all the other phenomena in the universe. Time and timeline are the measuring guideline to all human activities: work, distances, history, space, production, marketing, investment, liquidity, and budget. All other societies had to keep up with capitalism rhythm of what became the standard terminology and behavioral routines.
Power is no longer essentially related to borders, raw materials, dimensions of a nation, or even larger armies. Power is rate of return, turnover rate, and quickness in planning and starting production; power is quickness in distribution and consumption, quickness in gathering information and timely intelligence, quickness in analyzing and interpreting data, and quickness in relaying and disseminating information and intelligence. Power is how Time is tamed and used as the most potent ally and tool. Power is how to discover the best method to control and manage Time.
Oil, as a raw material, is no longer an intrinsic power; the value of oil is how quickly deposits are located, excavated, drilled, produced, refined, distributed, and consumed. Geopolitics, as a political power status, has changed its laws into chrono-politics for the flow of signals, dissemination of intelligence, and turnover of fundamental research into applied sciences.
Multinationals that represent the spirit of capitalism have tamed the most potent power tool: Time. Multinationals have set the rules of the game on how to compute, evaluate, account, and transform liquidity into ready investment; on how to change the concept of interest to periods of computing it; on how profit is defined as turnover rate of products and services. Multinationals have set the rules of how to do business, how to think business, and how to dominate with other people’s money and raw materials.
You cannot fight and win an enemy who adopted and tamed Time as its ultimate potent God while your arsenal is still limited to inert space and your notion of time is reversed toward the dead past, a past that is incorrectly read and synthesized.
It does not mean that capitalism cannot be defeated the way it is practiced as rules of the game but in the first phase you need to get trained to capitalism efficacious arsenal and then insert other dimensions to reform and transform the current ideology of capitalism. The new civilization capable to counter the enemy has to work toward a more viable quality of life such as earth sustainable ethics, eco-ethics, quality time to knowing yourself, quality time to listen intently to your communicator, quality time to focus on reading books relevant to man emotional development, and respect of the ancestors.
Most important to countering the enemy is learning to reserve peaceful time to reading the past without the need to superimpose your current obsessions and difficulties in order to interpret the past correctly and not tend to finding mythical solutions in the past that do not correspond to current realities: the fainting fits in reviewing the past is one of the magical behaviors because we mostly fail to read correctly our traditions and history. In order to endeavor reading the past we first must feel comfortable and well rooted in our present. It is important to read the past as a hobby in hours of distractions; otherwise, we end up projecting our current problems on ancient texts which distort proper focus on the initial content and context of the texts. I am reminded of a saying by Teddy Goldsmith (1928-2009): “We can destroy Earth without violating a single law: it is illegal to protect nature!”
Note: I extracted this notion from the French book of Fatema Mernissi “The political Harem”. Mernissi relied on the Moroccan author Mohammad Jaberi’s “We and our heritage” who criticized Moslem societies and imputed to the Western civilization the potent usage of time as its directive for modernization. I thought to redirect the topic to a more specific ideological/economics concept that is more adequate to describing the trend in the last century since Western nations were very much attached to nationalism and still are in many instances.
Part One: Complete equal rights in Islam for man and woman; (Written Mar. 18, 2010)
Women visited the spouses of the Prophet Muhammad and said: “Allah in the Koran talked about you (the spouses) but said nothing about us women. Are there nothing in us that merit to be mentioned?”
One of the spouses Umm Salma, a most beautiful matured spouse and an aristocrat from the tribe of Quraich, relayed to Muhammad this question: “Why men are mentioned in the Koran but not women?” Muhammad had to answer.
A few days later, the Prophet recited a verse in the adjacent mosque to the spouses residences which stated: “A man and a woman who have submitted to Allah (the one and only God), who are believers, who are pious, who are sincere, who are patients, who fear Allah, who give charity, who fast, who protect their sexual parts, who invoke Allah frequently, the Allah has prepared forgiveness and limitless recompense” Consequently, Allah sees no differences in genders who have submitted to Allah and are believers in the community.
Muhammad then endeavored to pronounce an entire Sourat called “Women” (Al Nissa2) and then demanded equitable shares in heritage to both gender and to children and orphans. In pre-Islamic Arabia, women were considered chattel as in then Jewish communities. One verse said “remit to men a part of what parents and relatives left in heritage; and remit equitably to women a part of the heritage whether the heritage is little or a lot”
Men in Medina tried their best to resume the pre-Islamic traditions.
Umm Kajja (with 5 daughters) complained to Muhammad saying: “My husband is dead and his brother is demanding to stick to tradition and to ignore the new laws. He is claiming that women do not participate in fights for loots and thus we have claim to heritage” There was a succession of such complaints which required a Sourat on the questions of heritage and legal matters of remarrying.
The verse 19 in Sourat “Women” states: “O you believers! You are not permitted to take away women in heritage against their will; or to forbid them remarrying so that you may capture part of what they received unless they manifestly committed a proven infamy.” Verse 2 said: “Give to orphans what is their due… Do not eat what belong of their shares: This behavior constitutes a great sin.” The Sourat on “Women” goes into great length on details of proportional shares in heritage.
Note 1: This article is extracted from “The Political Harem: The Prophet and the women” by Fatema Mernissi.
Note 2: There are bunches of mindless and rapacious seemingly matured men who plunder other people’s shares by fraudulent interpretations of the Koran; they were labeled “Sufahaa2” in the Koran.
Arab Sex Art
Posted by: adonis49 on: June 14, 2009
Arab Sex Art: Star of the Internet (June 14, 2009)
In her Preface of “Love in the Moslem Countries“ Fatema Mernissi wrote:
“My editor wanted to publish an investigation on love in the Moslem countries that I had written 20 years ago and that I had published in the magazine ” Jeune Afrique” (Young Africa). I told my editor that no one is interested to read Ibn Hazm (an expert on sex and seduction during the Arab Andalusia period around the year 1000).
My academic friend that I had invited for lunch to extract information from said to me: “You are disconnected of the digital galaxy. The translated book of Ibn Hazm is the best seller on the internet.”
Fatema felt a surge of anger: her male friend was only 7 years younger; then how come he is connected and I am so far beyond in technology?
Fatema learned that the search engine of Google had mentioned Ibn Hazm 200,000 times in less than 0.1 second. There is a site based in Paris Iqra Shop Com that offers CD to learn Arabic, the Koran and the Hadith for the francophone people and other clothing garments.
The book of Ibn Hazm “The affinities of love and The Necklace of the dove” is sold for 12 Euro and described as a must read reference on the subtleties of love proper to Moslems.
Thus, Fatema re-caled her editor and said “Ibn Hazm was right. Love is eternal. I will have to add a chapter on love in Islam in the time of Internet”
The Al Jazeera channel (the Arab counterpart of CNN) is based in Dubai and has Qaradawi as star commentator on love and sex in Islam. Imam Qaradawi calls on an army of experts in religion, fekh, shari3a, psychology, psychoanalysis, sociology, and physicians of both genders to answer the thousands of questions that flood his bureau. Qaradawi posts his answers on the net (al internet wal-hub) and publishes booklets at low cost in matters of marriage and love for the adolescents and their parents.
Islam Online has competitors in Muslima.com to aid searching for the appropriate partner in friendship, discussion, romance, and marriage. In the subject of romance the choc of civilization is a non issue because it is universal as the object of world ethic.
For example, estimate in 1999 indicate that aging people had invested over a trillion dollars for rejuvenating their look, especially growing hair on their bolding skull.
Ibn Hazm was born in Cordoba (994-1064) of an aristocratic family.
His father was vizier and he became vizier in Valencia. Ibn Hazm was polyvalent in erudition; he was grammarian, scientist, philosopher, and a religious jurist. He lived in a period as troubled as ours; he led the Zahirite movement against the rigid Malekite sect.
He was made vizier twice and was incarcerated several times when power kept shifting among the warring factions in Andalusia. He came to the conclusion that the best remedy for the decomposition and disintegration of society was to learn authentic love and experience the power of “falling in love”
Other famous Arab authors in seduction are Ibn Al-Jawzi “Denigration of Love” (Dammu Al Hawa) and Ibn Qayyim Al Jawziyya “The Garden of lovers” Rawdat al muhibbeen). If all fails, you may fall back to “One thousand and one nights” where you find all kinds of detailed psychoanalytical description of emotions and sexual desires.
It appears that oil may deplete but the medieval archive of Arabic manuscripts on love, sex, and seduction is here to be mined, translated, published, and disseminated in all form of media because romance is for the eternity.
The Arab civilization was the richest in the field of sexual desires; it dissected sexual desire in all its forms, shapes, and varieties; they explained sexual desire in the minute details, pornographically, physiologically, anatomically, and psychologically and left us scientific manuscripts in that field with accurate terminologies.
Note: I opened another category in my blog Adonis49 (Seduction/Love/Sex).
You may start with the links for those interested in following the conversation: https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/seduction-tales/ https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/love-tales/ https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2009/06/07/sex-tales/
Adonis Diaries 