Miscellaneous articles/columns corner,,,,

[N.O.R.F]

This article reminds of the time I told a drunk football fan, who told me to go back to where I came from, that I spoke better English than him (and alot more but we wont get into that )

 

Merson the mangler joins TV's glottal gobstoppers

 

 

John Sadler

Tuesday August 14, 2007

The Guardian

 

 

Television coverage of the start of the new football season was as comprehensive as ever - unless you are bothered about the way in which children are influenced by what they see and hear on the small screen. There seems to be no respite to the speed at which the letter T is being eliminated from the English language now mangled by those invited to air their views.

It would be too much to expect delivery on a par with Ustinov, Burton or Olivier, I know, but unless I am mistaken the art of punditry is being dumbed down to a level where even northerners speak with a southern accent. Where Celtic is Cel'ic, Charlton becomes Charl'on, Forest hail from No'ingham, City is Ci'y and United is similarly untied.

 

The ball had been set rolling long before Jamie Redknapp, having earlier described a scoring chance as "a great opportuni'y", seriously questioned Tottenham's losing performance at newly promoted Sunderland by informing his audience: "There was a lack of quali'y from quali'y if you know what I mean."

The mood had been set on Sky's Soccer Special where a panel of former players report matches "live" from studio monitors having first previewed the fixtures with sundry pearls of wisdom such as Paul Merson's take on the appointment of Sammy Lee as Sam Allardyce's successor at Bolton: "It's one of them situations where he couldn't refuse the job." And he registered his doubts about Liverpool's prospects, believing: "If Jamie Carragher don't play, I think they'll struggle." Just as Spurs struggled at the Stadium of Light, apparently, for Redknapp was sure: "Roy Keane will be pleased because they [spurs] haven't really threa'ened."

 

In an age when some people argue against the need for schools to teach accurate spelling perhaps we should not worry too much about the diction of those from whom so many of the young take their example. Never mind the quali'y, mum, have you bought me the la'est replica shirt? And when little Johnny's older he might master the longer words like repe'i'ive and compe'i'ive because he'll know no be'er. Oh for the days before television inundated the eardrums with ungrammatical piffle from a combination of failed managers and ex-players.

 

The 50s and 60s produced a series of gems from managers who actually tried to speak English and whose mistakes were genuine errors that generated humour of which they were not aware. I am thinking of Ivor Powell, a Welsh legend in this specialised field who managed Bradford City and Carlisle and whose clumsiness with words remains memorable even today. After one particularly fruitful sequence of results his analysis was simple: "Without doubt," he said, "one of the secrets of our successful season was the harmonium in the dressing room."

 

It was probably during that run when Powell decided on a celebratory dinner for his team and later described it as: "A lovely meal, we had. Lovely. We had a big steak - with all the tarnishings." Quite possibly it was the day when the coach driver was having difficulty finding the ground. Until Ivor made his way to the front as they approached a junction and instructed the man at the wheel: "Don't veer right, now, and don't veer left. Just you veer straight on."

 

One tires of managers nowadays who say virtually nothing, whose profound assessment of any given 90 minutes stretches little further than "they made it difficult for us" or "we didn't really play", like Chris Hutchings, the new Wigan manager, at the weekend: "We worked hard enough; it was just a matter of putting the ball in the net."

 

No such drivel deserves reporting but Ron Saunders, that tough nut of a manager of both Birmingham and Villa in the 70s and 80s, warrants immortality for two statements attributed to him. Asked about allegations of unrest behind the scenes he apparently posed his own question: "Allegations are all very well but I'd like to know who these alligators are." And in trying to explain how a two-goal lead had become a 3-2 defeat insisted: "As I see it, if you're going to commit suicide, you don't do it yourself."

 

We laughed then - not at them but with them - and had less reason to be appalled, as we are today. No channel is particularly worse than another but their teams of pundits leave much to be desired. Not like Dick Duckworth whose contentment with his line-up at Scunthorpe in 1962 was such that he rang me to say: "I think I've the best side I've ever had now. We've a nice blend of old 'uns and youngsters. I think I've got the mucus of a good team." He was sure he had it sor'ed.

 

http://football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2148140,00.html

[N.O.R.F]

Checkpoint Checking

 

A trio of middle-aged Charlie's Angels come at dawn to monitor the army's treatment of Palestinians crossing the border.

 

Slumped against the concrete slabs of the graffiti-covered security wall, I drifted off to sleep as I waited for the line of Palestinians to shuffle forward towards the checkpoint. The sun shone weakly through the dark early morning clouds, a cold wind did its damnedest to extinguish the cigarettes that hung from almost every pair of lips, and the only sound was the rustle of paper bags as the workers ate their breakfasts al fresco - as if they had a choice ... Welcome to rush hour at the Bethlehem checkpoint, where the difference between a day's paid work or a wasted morning's queuing followed by a mournful trudge home all rests on the whims of the bored teenagers manning the turnstiles inside their bullet-proof sentry boxes.

 

My own presence in the midst of the interminable line of labourers was down to my guides for the day, three Israeli women from Mahsom Watch who had encouraged me to use my British passport to pass through the checkpoint into Bethlehem so I could time how long it took me to return to the Israeli side. A trio of middle-aged Charlie's Angels, the women come every Thursday morning to the checkpoint at the crack of dawn to keep an eye on the army's treatment of those crossing the border, and to intervene when required on behalf of the helpless Palestinians whose complaints fall on deaf ears.

 

As the queue edged forward agonisingly slowly, I looked around me at the world-weary faces of the men in their tattered work clothes as they stared helplessly at the red and green lights that hung above the turnstile. Those at the front of the semi-dark hall were bathed in the luminous glare of the red light, as it beamed out its warning to stand still and not come any closer to the booth 10 metres ahead. A couple of muttered cries of "open another window, please" punctured the silence, but had little effect on the stony-faced soldiers manning their posts.

 

All of a sudden, the green light flashed into life, and the crowd surged forward as though scrambling for a place on the last helicopter out of Saigon. Five seconds later, and the light was cruelly switched back to red, with less than a dozen people having managed to make it through to the promised land. Eventually, the floodgates opened once again, and this time I was propelled forward by the swell as we pushed our way through the iron doorway.

 

As we rounded the corner, the men began removing their belts and holding up their trousers pitifully with one hand, as they clutched their valuables with the other. When we reached the x-ray machines, paint-spattered workboots were kicked off and placed on the conveyor belt, along with bags of food and bundles of clothes. Forgetting my current status as merely another body to be searched, I walked through the metal detector without removing either my belt from my waist or my keys from my pocket. The siren screamed out its annoyance at my slip, and I retraced my steps and tried again.

 

Again I failed, thanks to the lighter in my back pocket, and the men behind me angrily motioned for me to take the situation more seriously. This was no good-humoured queue of holiday-makers making light of inconvenient airport security - this was real life, and time was money to the impoverished men desperate to get through to find work on the other side.

 

Once I'd reattached my belt and rejoined the queue, I stood morosely in line for another 15 minutes. Those ahead of me had their hand-prints read by the computer monitors and handed their papers to the soldiers through the gap in the glass. Brandishing my British passport like a shield, I strode up to the cubicle, where the bored girl gave my maroon-encased papers a cursory glance before nonchalantly waving me through - evoking jealous stares from the green-ID-carrying masses behind me.

 

On my return, I rejoined the three Mahsom Watch women and we spent another half hour observing the machinations of the checkpoint. When it became clear that there were not enough windows open to deal with the burgeoning number of people crossing, Ruti phoned the local army commander, who agreed to send a soldier to man another stall. I was standing next to the door of the troop's barracks, and a sharp blow from behind announced the arrival of the extra soldier dispatched to deal with the crowd, as she kicked the door open and strode into the hall.

 

Expecting her to apologise for knocking me sideways, I looked plaintively at her, and received a glower and "nu, what?" in return. I responded in kind, but she'd spotted our Mahsom Watch badges by now and knew full well who was responsible for the sudden end to her break time. She sneered at me and flounced away, gun swinging from her shoulder in time with her footsteps.

 

Every now and then, an incoming Palestinian would stop and greet Ruti and her comrades, exchanging pleasantries and thanking them for their work. Outside the reception hall stood half-full minibuses, and those exiting the checkpoint hurled themselves at the bus doors, fighting one another for a coveted place aboard that would guarantee them a day's income on a building site in Jerusalem.

 

As the queue finally thinned, our observation job was nearly done for the day, and we got into the car and headed off into the hills for the next stage of the proceedings. We drove to Neve Yunis, where two Palestinian men were stranded after receiving fines from the police. Thanks to yet another malicious trick on the Israeli authorities' behalf, a Palestinian who gets a speeding ticket, for example, will have his papers confiscated until he pays the fixed penalty at the appropriate office. Except, of course, he can't get to the offices without his papers, since the army won't let any Palestinian through a checkpoint without his ID documents. No payment, no papers; no papers, no payment - which is where the women of Mahsom Watch come in.

 

Ruti and her colleagues play the middleman in this particular game of chicanery, ferrying the money and the papers between the two sides until the situation is sorted, and so it was this morning. The two grateful men poured out their hearts in thanks, before clutching their documents to their chests and heading off down the dirt track towards their village. Next up was a visit to the DSO offices, where a large crowd of young men stood resignedly outside, waiting for a chance to plead their case for a permit to work inside Israel's borders.

 

As we approached the group, a white-haired man called out to Ruti, hurrying over to her and begging her to help him. "I've been put on the Shabak list", he cried, "and I don't know why. They say I'm banned from entering Israel, and they won't give me a hearing to put my case to them. I've got six children to feed, and all my work's in Israel - I don't know where to turn". Trying to calm him, Ruti thrust into his hand the phone number of her colleague Sylvia, who is well-versed in intervening with the security services in cases such as this. "I've spoken to her," he replied, running an anxious hand through his thinning hair, "but she hasn't been able to do anything so far."

 

"It's getting desperate now at home", he went on - "what am I meant to do?" Save for encouraging him to try Sylvia again, Ruti was unable to give him any other practical advice, having calculated the odds stacked against him. Afterwards, she told me that often Shabak wait until people like him are on the verge of penury, and then approach them quietly and tell them all their troubles could be over - if they'll just provide them a name of a terrorist in their village. Even though their quarry might not have a clue who is or isn't on the extremists' books, he'll often give any name just to get his papers back and regain the chance to work - and thus the cycle continues.

 

As we drove back to Jerusalem, Ruti waxed lyrical about the status quo that is allowing such criminal deeds to occur. "Occupation has to involve dehumanisation," she told me. "If you have feelings, you can't kick someone down - so we've conditioned our soldiers to have no feelings for the Palestinians. We've brought up this third generation [of Israelis] to act like conquerors, and to have contempt for the conquered."

 

I suggested that the plight of the Palestinian workers is similar to that of battery chickens. No one likes to think of the conditions battery chickens are forced to live in; instead they prefer not to dwell on the issue at all, so long as they get their cheap meat (or cheap labour, in this case). Ruti agreed, saying "Israelis just don't want to know what goes on, they don't want to see themselves as the bad guys. People need to feel good, so they simply close their eyes to reality."

 

Which is what makes the work Mahsom Watch does so crucial to breaking the silence. These women and their colleagues are all Israeli Jews, and their publicising via the Israeli media the atrocious conditions for Palestinians means that their message reaches parts that international activist groups can't reach. At the same time, "we show the Palestinians that not all Israeli [Jews] are enemies, and that's a vital part of our work," said Ruti. "Once, at Qalandiya checkpoint, a man brought his six-year-old daughter to meet us to make her understand that there are good Israelis as well as bad. She was reluctant to meet us, and shied away at first, but he soon got her smiling and talking to us."

 

The army and the authorities will always be able to justify the tight security measures they use to keep the Palestinians at arm's length, and so too will the Israeli public themselves. However, what they won't, or can't see is that it's the daily humiliation and hardship that breeds the next generation of bombers, and guarantees the hatred is passed down from father to son and beyond.

 

The man who returns home without a day's pay to a hungry and desperate family won't blame anyone but the lackadaisical soldier who didn't switch the light from red to green in time for him to clamber aboard the minibus - and neither will his children. The man with no means of getting his ID card back other than coming cap in hand to a group of tirelessly devoted volunteers from Mahsom Watch won't ever forgive the authorities for the misery they put him and his family through. And the man forced to turn collaborator just to put food on the table for his six kids won't ever forget the cruelty of the occupiers who put him in such an awful predicament.

 

If we don't want terror on our doorstep, we'd do well to treat those over the garden fence with at least a modicum of respect and consideration. If we don't; if we refuse to retreat from our entrenched position of mistrust, mistreatment and misanthropy, then there's no hope for any kind of resolution that doesn't involve more bloodshed for years to come. Unless the call is heeded now by those with the power to help the Palestinians, a bitter harvest will once more be reaped by the very people the army is meant to protect with their actions.

 

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/seth_freedman/2007/08/checkpoint_checking.html

[N.O.R.F]

Extinction of the engineers

 

 

Britain's industrial future is threatened by a lack of skilled workers and a glut of postmodern apathy

 

Jonathan Glancey

Monday October 15, 2007

The Guardian

 

 

A few weeks ago the QE2, one of the world's last ocean liners, sailed into Greenock docks - a final homecoming for the 40-year-old ship, built by John Brown & Co at Clydebank. Next year the retiring Cunard liner sails to Dubai where, demoted to serve as a floating hotel and casino, her mighty engines and deep hooters will be silenced.

 

The many thousands of people who came to watch this beautiful ship, as the RAF's Red Arrows performed aerial reels above her, will surely have felt as I did - sad that the Clyde is quite unable to produce such an internationally admired work of design and engineering today. In our knowledge-based New British economy we like to believe that making nothing much beyond money, while replacing engineering works with vast, energy-gobbling Shanghai-style shopping malls, or "urban regeneration projects", is somehow clever.

 

Just days after the QE2's tumultuous arrival on the Clyde, the Association of Consultant Engineers (Ace) revealed that Britain has a shortage of 20,000 engineers, a figure likely to rise by 4,000 next year. To meet demand, Ace is calling on the Home Office to relax immigration rules so that civil, structural, environmental and building services engineers can be headhunted from around the world to do the jobs that we oh so very postmodern British snub.

 

And yet, because we want ever more major engineering-driven projects, including the 2012 Olympics, Crossrail, new high-speed railways, and ambitious "urban regeneration" schemes the length and breadth of the country, we need an army, navy and airforce of engineers to realise them.

 

Just as we require ever more cheap labour from across the world to clean our offices, sweep our streets, drive our buses, pick our cockles and generally wipe our collective bottom, now we need engineers from Poland, India, China and elsewhere to design and build the infrastructure we find increasingly hard to make for our digital selves.

 

We think it clever for foreigners to do our dirty, and now our practical and even creative, work for us. Eventually, though, we will lose out to nations willing to shape and make things, and who still take pleasure in what we see as grubby old heavy-duty engineering.

 

The Germans clearly enjoy making things while enjoying a high standard of living. Bavaria is bristling with knowledge-based industries, while boasting many "old fashioned" engineering enterprises. On its Thuringian borders, the Meiningen works of the Deutsche Bahn (German state railways) has recently built a high-pressure steam boiler for the A1 Locomotive Trust, a Darlington-based organisation currently completing the first British mainline express steam locomotive in more than 50 years. This might seem quixotic, but no British company could take on a work that will give pleasure to countless people. A nation of call-centre operatives and customer service facility managers, we look on, stupefied, as foreigners weld and rivet for us. In an age of 300kph electric trains crisscrossing the Federal Republic, the idea of making a steam locomotive boiler is something the German railway is able to take in its stride.

 

In Finland, the land of Nokia, the Aker Yards in Helsinki, and other major cities, continue to design, engineer and construct the world's largest passenger ships, among them the Freedom of the Seas class for Royal Caribbean International. Even bigger vessels are on the drawing board. The Finns, it seems, are quietly content engineering ships that are much bigger than the QE2 while mass-producing the latest in lightweight digital mass-consumption technology.

 

In Britain we have come to believe that we are a nation of consumers rather than producers, that life is all about borrowing unfeasible sums of money to buy the disposable gewgaws we crave. But even shopping malls and the complex infrastructure underpinning them have to be engineered by someone. Still, leave that to foreigners. We'll complain, of course, as they arrive to take on the senior jobs we increasingly refuse to do, but now that we have begun to look upon heavy-duty engineering projects in much the same way as forest tribes might have gazed, uncomprehendingly, at Roman aqueducts two thousand years ago, what else can we do?

 

· Jonathan Glancey is the Guardian's architecture critic

jonathan.glancey@guardian.co.uk

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2191221,00.html

[N.O.R.F]

Return of the Muslim other

 

 

The far right is reviving the prejudices that used to dominate mainstream European politics

 

Soumaya Ghannoushi

Wednesday October 24, 2007

The Guardian

 

 

In a few days time a cluster of far-right groups under the name the Stop the Islamisation of Europe alliance will hold rallies in London, Copenhagen and Marseilles to demand an end to what they call "the overt and covert expansion of Islam in Europe". Although the events are likely to attract no more than a handful of protesters, their message resonates widely. On Saturday the rightwing People's party, notorious for its virulent hostility to ethnic minorities and Muslims, emerged as the victor in the Swiss elections, taking 29% of the vote, the best electoral performance by a party in the country's elections since 1919.

 

The far right is on the ascendancy in many parts of Europe. Beyond its explicit party political expressions, this assumes a more worrying form. What had been traditionally confined to the margins of dominant political discourse is progressively penetrating its mainstream, with parties of the centre absorbing much of the far right's populist rhetoric. This underlies the complaint by Jean-Marie le Pen, leader of the racist National Front, that Nicolas Sarkozy had "stolen his clothes". Across the Channel, the Tory candidate for the London mayoralty, Boris Johnson, believes that "to any non-Muslim reader of the Koran, Islamophobia - fear of Islam - seems a natural reaction".

 

We are witnessing a reversion to the type of cultural essentialism that dominated political and academic discourse until the mid-1900s. Its central theme, the purity and superiority of European culture, was dealt a powerful blow by the tradition of post-colonial studies and radical critique of Orientalism. The trend brought together progressive, leftist voices from Europe and the US with others from the south amid the dismantling of modern-day empires and the rise of developing world liberation movements.

 

The same discourse is reconstructing its terms today by substituting the classical east-west bipolarity at its core with one of "Islam" and "west". The west's rationality, tolerance, individualism and freedom are now contrasted with Islam's superstition, fanaticism, fatalism and repressiveness. In the history books, this trend has manifested itself in the resurrection of the myth of the benevolent empire, championed by figures such as Niall Ferguson and Andrew Roberts.

 

September 11, the emergence of violent radical Islamic groups, and the war on terror have created fertile ground for the revival of this tradition. Its spirit permeates much of the language current in the political sphere and many sectors of the media. What had once been cause for disrepute now goes unquestioned and barely remarked upon. The vocabulary is various, from immigration, integration and citizenship to terrorism, radicalism, Islamism and an endless chain of -isms. But the referent is consistent: Islam and Muslims. It is a game of insinuations, of codes, in which meaning is readily conveyable without need for explicitness or directness.

 

Beyond all the noise about Europe's "Muslim problem" lurks a growing unease about the changing texture of European society. Gone are the days of pure white, Christian Europe. Now Europe is multi-ethnic, multireligious and multicultural, a fact which many find hard to swallow. Muslims are part of this evolving reality, but the idea that the continent is being Islamised is a figment of the right's imagination.

 

In a European population of some 540 million, Muslims number between 20 million and 25 million, or about 4%. The majority are underprivileged, and socially, economically and politically marginalised. Whatever the scaremongers say, Muslim armies are not at Europe's gate preparing to conquer.

 

Obsession with the question of Britishness in the UK and with les valeurs de la République in France reflects a state of anxiety about identity. The collapse of empire, globalisation and flow of immigrants from the old colonies brought new peoples into Europe's bosom. The Muslim other - the Saracen or Turk, in opposition to whom Europe defined its imaginary geographic and cultural borders - is now located within its frontiers, a sort of internal outsider. From the periphery of the empire in distant overseas colonies in Lahore or Algiers, it has moved to the periphery of capitals and industrial cities in London or Paris. The borders of identity and culture are overlapping, making it impossible to draw rigid boundaries between east and west, Europe and Islam, white and black.

 

At the heart of Europe's "Muslim problem" is an impotence and perhaps unwillingness to extend the norm of tolerance to newcomers from the Muslim world. Tolerance is not an abstract concept but the child of a specific historical context. In Europe it was the product of the religious wars, which ended in France, for instance, with the Edict of Nantes in 1598. Following the horrors of the Holocaust, the norm was widened to include Jews. And with the civil rights movement in the US, this was further extended to black people and other ethnic minorities - legally and theoretically, though not in practice. There is still resistance to the norm's broadening to encompass Muslims, something evident in the controversy over the building of mosques in northern Europe, as well as in the "veil problem" in France, Germany and other countries.

 

Some quasi-liberals continuously ask how we can be tolerant with people who preach intolerance - by whom they mean, of course, Muslims. A better question could be: to what extent are those who profess tolerance really tolerant?

 

· Soumaya Ghannoushi is director of research at IslamExpo

soumaya@islamexpo.com

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2197942,00.html

[N.O.R.F]

One good Arab

Hollywood has moved on from portraying all Arabs as villains. Several recent films include one token 'good Arab' who likes the US.

 

 

I could not help but watch The Kingdom without feeling throughout that I had seen this all before many times. The film uses the same tired, and sadly successful, Hollywood formula of so many of its predecessors: Arab villains, American heroes, and lots of weapons.

 

In The Kingdom, a major terrorist attack is committed in Saudi Arabia by Saudis, targeting American civilians and causing FBI agents to travel there to track down terrorist mastermind Abu Hamza.

 

There are two differences between the recent crop of such films and their older counterparts: they now employ real Arabs to perpetuate the old stereotypes, and they utilise a token Arab "good guy" to make up for the fact that the rest of the Arab characters are bad.

 

Tony Shalhoub in The Siege is a striking example, an Arab-American cop trying to stop Arab terrorist cells from continuing their large-scale bomb attacks on US soil.

 

The vast majority of the Arabs in The Kingdom, young and old, are portrayed negatively - from the brutal, hate-filled, anti-western, religiously fanatical terrorists, to the inept, corrupt, heavy-handed, secretive and frustratingly bureaucratic Saudi authorities.

 

The "good Arab" is Saudi Colonel Faris al-Ghazi, played by Israeli-Palestinian actor Ashraf Barhoum. He helps the FBI team and is fond of American culture, having grown up watching The Six Million Dollar Man and The Hulk, who was his inspiration in his career choice in law enforcement because the superhero "killed only the bad guys". Al Ghazi is the only Arab in The Kingdom who we get to know and empathise with (this is even the case with Saladin and Prince Nasir in the far more balanced Kingdom of Heaven and Syriana, respectively). On the other hand, we are exposed in depth to the humanity, grief, compassion, determination, ability and patriotism of most of the American characters.

 

The overall message of this gung-ho film is as simple as it is dangerous: America's allies in the Middle East are unreliable and unstable, so whatever the objections and consequences, the US can and must project its power in the region to defend itself, safeguard its interests and secure justice against those who inherently seek the demise of the west and - we are reminded several times at the end of the film - Israel.

 

Put simply, The Kingdom perpetuates negative stereotypes for a quick buck and an adrenaline rush, at a time in the world where breeding such ignorance and prejudice has proven catastrophic.

 

This is not simply confined to the film. The media reported that the cast was treated "like royalty" in the United Arab Emirates - where the film was partly shot - with the main actor Jamie Foxx given security guards, paramedics, Rolls-Royce transport, a palatial hotel and even a food taster.

 

However, I recently watched him on The Daily Show on the More4 channel being interviewed about his stay in the UAE.

 

He mocked the Arabic language and food, talking about eating "baked tiger paws" and "boiled camel hump." It seems it is not just audiences that are being brainwashed.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sharif_nashashibi/2007/10/one_good_arab.html

[N.O.R.F]

Migrants target booming Algeria

 

By Rachid Sekkai

BBC Focus on Africa magazine

 

While many young Algerians are risking their lives crossing the Mediterranean on fishing boats to find opportunities abroad, Africans from south of the Sahara are risking their lives through dry and hot deserts to live and work in Algeria.

 

Marcel, 31, is one of the lucky African migrants to have made it into the country - more than 30,000 try each year.

 

The Ivorian says he entered Algeria legally through the borders with Mali and Niger, after obtaining a three-month visa on arrival.

 

But six months on he is still here - he wanted to carry on his education but dropped out at secondary level to support his family.

 

He pays around $2 a night to sleep with seven other immigrants in a single room in a dilapidated building, which he describes as an "African ghetto."

 

Lost in the desert

 

Clandestine immigrants in Algeria constitute 50 African nationalities, with Mali, Niger and the Gambia topping the list.

 

Sudanese and Libyan immigrants also find their way to the country.

 

It is easy to see why. Algeria is booming economically.

 

The country's foreign debt has fallen from $28 billion in 1999 to only $5 billion today, thanks largely to high oil prices and the government's tight fiscal policies.

 

But these young men risk the ire of the Algerian border police, not only to take advantage of this booming economy, but also with the hope of entering Europe over the Mediterranean.

 

Marcel himself spent the equivalent of $200 on his journey from Ivory Cost.

 

The truck that carried him and 44 others from the city of Kidal in Mali to their destination in Algeria became lost in the desert.

 

"I spent four days with little drink before the driver could find his way again," he recalled.

 

He says that he saw fellow passengers die in front of him on the journey.

 

"These immigrants prefer to risk their lives to come to Algeria rather than go to other neighbouring countries because - job opportunities aside - they know that if they perish on Algerian soil the authorities will work to identify their origins and send them back to their countries," says Sami Riyad, a journalist with the main Algerian independent El-Khabar daily.

 

"If unsuccessful, they will be buried properly here."

 

In comparison to its North African neighbours Morocco, Tunisia and Libya, Algeria is bearing the brunt of an immigration influx.

 

In response, the border authorities have set up a detention centre near the city of Maghnia where hundreds of illegal immigrants are being held awaiting deportation.

 

"It costs the Algerian government about $200 per person to deport them," Mr Riyad says.

 

Unsympathetic

 

But this does not necessarily mean Algerians welcome the immigrants.

 

"We feel a bit of racism here," says Marcel.

 

"Kids throw stones at us. We can't make friends with Algerians."

 

Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that, despite an oil-and-gas-rich economy that is rapidly heating up, there are not enough jobs for Algerians themselves.

 

The country currently has an official unemployment rate of 15%, although it is believed by some analysts to be double that.

 

The Algerian press is equally unsympathetic.

 

Much ink has been spent in deploring the state of illegal Africans on the streets of the country's cities, but even more has been devoted to stories alleging that they are the cause of the increase in illegal activities such as trading in counterfeit currencies, goods and passports as well as the smuggling of drugs.

 

However, despite the challenges some Algerians feel black Africans pose to authorities in the country, the foreigners that many young Algerians are eyeing with caution are the Chinese migrants.

 

"The Africans don't pose a threat to us," says Mourad, a 30-year old medical consultant who lives in the middle-class area of Al-Biar, south of Algiers.

 

"They are just passing by. However, the Chinese workers seem to come here to stay. They have set up businesses and shops, and even started marrying Algerians."

 

And the fact that the Chinese are seen as muscling in on an already crowded job market has resulted in many young professionals looking to leave Algeria.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7125746.stm

[N.O.R.F]

The sword is mightier

An unarmed civilian observer mission can't offer balanced policing to Palestinians in Hebron, a city where the IDF runs the show

 

 

It's easy to claim that the pen is mightier than the sword from the safety of a university lecture hall, or a middle class soiree in a suburban dining room. However, in the bandit country that is Hebron, the adage rings somewhat hollow, as I found after spending a day out on patrol with Temporary International Presence in the City of Hebron (TIPH). What I saw during my six-hour shadowing of the dedicated yet ultimately toothless members of the TIPH team made me question the wisdom of their presence in the troubled city.

 

Established in the wake of Baruch Goldstein's shooting spree in a local mosque, TIPH's raison d'etre is to "monitor the situation in Hebron and record breaches of international law." In essence, they are stationed in the city to bear witness to the almost daily violent incidents that erupt between the Jewish settlers of Hebron and their Palestinian neighbours.

 

So it was on Wednesday, as I set out with Sibyll and Mortens, respectively Swiss and Danish TIPH workers, who are old hands at dealing with the explosive situation using the limited tools at their disposal. Our first incident was fairly mundane by comparison with what we'd see later - a youth protesting to the pair that every time Palestinian Authority workmen came to try and fix a sewage blockage in the souk, Israeli soldiers ordered them to leave the area without allowing them to carry out their repairs.

 

"This is the third time we've heard this story in four days," said Sibyll, as she noted down the boy's complaint in her notebook. "All we can do is to try and get our liaison officers to try to intervene with the army and the PA, and attempt to get permits for them to complete their work [unimpeded]." Mortens concurred with her plan of action: "It won't happen overnight, though - we have to write a report, contact the DCO, and hope that they can achieve results." And in the meantime, the stench of raw sewage hangs over the market and adds to the sense of discomfort that the shopkeepers are forced to endure.

 

There had been reports that it was the settlers who had blocked up the sewage system, causing the problem, although that was hard for the team to verify. However, the next incident they were called to appeared far more clear cut. In a busy street underneath a barred window of one of the settlement buildings, a couple of tin cans with unidentifiable viscous liquid oozing from them lay on the edge of the pavement. "They tried to light it before hurling it at us," declared a middle-aged Palestinian man breathlessly, pointing up in the direction of the offenders' homes.

 

"They were 16 or 17," he continued, "not small kids at all." Hanging from the bars of the windows were sandbags filled with stones, which Sibyll said, "are prepared by the children, who then throw the rocks down at the Palestinians. The IDF come, but always deny that anything has happened." All that TIPH can do in such circumstances is pull out their notebooks, log a record of the incident, and then file the report with the DCO, which does little to placate the injured parties or to reassure them that anything tangible is being done to protect them.

 

"There's a feeling of real frustration amongst us," said Ghassan, a Swedish member of TIPH. "We can't intervene in a situation; all we can do is turn up and take photos." He explained that this causes inevitable resentment on the part of the Palestinians, while others on the Palestinian side "don't like us because they're convinced we work for the Israelis."

 

As we continued along the route of the patrol, we came across a gaggle of teenagers surrounding a dishevelled-looking man sitting askew in a wheelchair. His T-shirt badly ripped from shoulder to shoulder and covered in bloodstains, he shook as he turned plaintively to Mortens and Sibyll and pleaded for their help. "The army did this," he began. "They beat me, and there are 15 of them still in my house now - you've got to go and do something."

 

After taking photos of his injuries to use as evidence, we hurried off in the direction of his house in the company of one of the boys who was acting as guide. However, our way was obstructed by a shaven-headed Russian IDF soldier who ordered us to take a far longer, circuitous route, since the Palestinian boy was banned from walking past the Cave of Machpela. When we eventually got to the raided house, the operation was still in full flow, with heavily-armed soldiers milling around on every floor of the building as the children of the house nervously looked on.

 

Thanks to the terms of their mandate, TIPH members are unimpeded in their monitoring work, thus the soldiers had to let them photograph the ongoing search and interview the commander once he'd declared the building safe. "There were rocks being thrown from the roof," he stated flatly when questioned. "I didn't see anyone in a wheelchair," he went on, looking to his charges for confirmation, "and if there had been, I promise you he'd still be here with us."

 

"It's a bit fishy that he managed to get out of the house and all the way down the road in a wheelchair in the middle of a raid." He proposed that the man's injuries might instead be a result of him jumping off the roof and trying to escape arrest, implying that the wheelchair was merely a prop used to garner sympathy from the TIPH team. Once the soldiers had left, we entered the house and interviewed the wounded man's children, who assured us that he had been beaten by the troops.

 

However, they also admitted that their younger brother had been throwing rocks at the army, and refused to stop when his older siblings and father remonstrated with him. At the same time, they couldn't give a convincing explanation for how their apparently wheelchair-bound father had made it up the impossibly narrow stairs onto the roof to chastise their brother. This prompted Sibyll to complain that the hardest part of her job was trying to decide who was being honest and who just wanted to apportion all the blame to the other side.

 

The commander's parting words to us had been "We were just doing our job - no one should have rocks thrown at them, should they?" While entirely right, his concern seemed pretty ironic given the complete ambivalence the army showed earlier when Mortens and Sibyll tried to report the missile attacks on the Palestinians. That the IDF runs the whole show in the city, and TIPH can do little more than meekly complain from the sidelines is the heart of the problem when it comes to policing the area fairly.

 

Of course, Israel is hardly likely to agree to arm the likes of TIPH, just as they have all but repealed the authority's mandate to be in charge of keeping order in the Palestinian half of the city. However, given that a large part of TIPH's purpose is to try and afford the same level of protection and security to the Palestinians that the settlers enjoy, it is clear that there is no balance whatsoever at present.

 

Well-meaning but ultimately impotent foreigners wielding notebooks and pens are no match for M16-toting soldiers when it comes to delivering justice to the city's residents. Therefore it is no surprise that, despite what TIPH was set up to deliver, the Palestinians feel no better looked after now than they did before 1994. And that is no more likely to assuage their frustration and fears than any other half-hearted internationally-led initiative - meaning that their ongoing feeling of abandonment is entirely understandable while the best they've got is TIPH.

 

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/seth_freedman/2008/01/the_might_of_the_sword.html

[N.O.R.F]

The cruelty of youths

As long as the vile behaviour of young settlers is allowed to continue unimpeded by Israeli authorities, peace will not be achieved

 

Of all the heartbreaking scenes I've witnessed during my time in this country, a recent incident on a dusty road in a Hebron valley stands head and shoulders above the rest. No blood was spilled, no bones broken, but, in the space of a few seconds, I lost all hope that there is any way out of the quicksand in which the region is forever sinking. At least, that is, while the vicious sadism of the settlers is allowed to flourish unimpeded and uncontrolled by the Israeli authorities.

 

Readers often try to discredit my writing by claiming a lack of context in my pieces, so before I recount the sorry tale, I'll throw in the necessary caveats. Yes, Hebron is a holy city to Jews as well as Muslims. Yes, there have been numerous murderous attacks perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists against Jewish Israelis in the area. And yes, while the situation there remains as fragile as it is at present, there are definitely justifications for at least some of the security measures that are currently in place in the city.

 

But nothing - repeat, nothing - can excuse the cruelty and malice that a gang of five settler youths brazenly displayed in front of us that afternoon. I was in the area shadowing a team of Ecumenical Accompaniers (EA), an organisation similar in essence to Temporary International Presence in the City of Hebron (TIPH), though less official and therefore far less limited by diplomatic restrictions in their monitoring of the situation. That said, even they are terrified to intervene when it comes to settler crimes, believing that the army will do nothing to protect them from the inevitable savagery the settlers are notorious for dishing out to international observers.

 

We had headed over to a Palestinian farmer's field where, for the last four days, settlers have been illegally constructing a house out of rocks in the middle of his land. Various half-hearted attempts by the army to disperse the invaders have had little effect, as we saw when we arrived at the scene. Five teenage boys and girls were nonchalantly guarding their half-built structure, casually shooting the breeze with one another - until we turned up, that is.

 

Screaming at me with the husky tones of a voice in the throes of breaking, one of the boys demanded that I put down my camera and "get the hell out of here". Nonplussed by his assumption that he held some kind of authority over me, I ignored his cries and carried on photographing him and his partners in crime.

 

Stalking towards me with what he considered to be a great degree of menace, he again snarled that I should stop taking photos, "or I'll kill you". Given the size of him, I couldn't help but laugh, at which point he demanded to see my ID, "or I'll call the police." "Call them by all means," I replied, as one of the settler girls strutted over to take my photo in an attempt to show that two could play at my game.

 

Facing off like duellers brandishing pistols at dawn, the ludicrous stand-off only ended when my EA hosts decided that we'd done enough and that it would be prudent to head off in case the kids' parents showed up on the scene. Decamping to a vantage point on a nearby hill, we kept an eye on the situation, which was when the true horror of the children's superiority complexes came to light.

 

As a Palestinian man rode slowly up the road to the side of the field, the boys raced towards him with their female counterparts bounding along in their wake, long dresses billowing in the wind. Surrounding the man and forcing him to stop, they furiously demanded that he turn his animal round and ride back from whence he came, and the worst part of it all was that the man, a full 10 years older than them, just meekly complied with their orders.

 

This was the brutal, playground-bully side of the settlers that has become so embedded in their psyches that even their youth think they run the town, like some kind of pre-pubescent sheriff's posse. At the same time, this was the cowed and beaten side of the local Palestinians, who have long given up trying to retain their dignity or demanding equal treatment at the hands of their oppressors.

 

And, like I saw with TIPH last week, watching powerlessly from the sidelines were a group of international observers with the best of intentions, yet the weakest of influence when it comes to intervening in incidents of this sort. Even I, despite my initial bluster in front of the marauding settler teens, had felt a certain sense of unease as I argued the toss with them in what is essentially bandit country.

 

The army were, as usual, nowhere to be seen when all this took place; something we took up with a soldier we met a couple of roads away. He was utterly charming as he took the time to explain the situation to us, telling us he was just as sick of the settlers' breaches of the law as us, "but what can we do about it?" He told us that the day before they had rounded up the kids and escorted them back to their homes in Kiryat Arba, but "today they're back. It's just a game of cat and mouse."

 

Promising to deal with them "in an hour or two," he smiled sympathetically at us before turning back to his fellow guard and kicking a football. He knew as well as us that he wasn't going to get any orders to take any real action against the kids. And why would he, given that the IDF's unofficial brief is to protect the settlers of the town rather than all of Hebron's residents?

 

One girl I was with mused that perhaps the kids aren't to blame; that they're merely products of parents who educate them to treat the Palestinians with such callous disregard. She might be right, but it's neither here nor there when they're only a few years off being the adult settlers of tomorrow. When they're old enough to carry guns, then there's no doubt that they will, by which time they'll have moved up a gear, switching from insults and barbs to the proverbial sticks and stones.

 

While there's no one around to take the settlers down a peg or two and show them that they are not lords of all they survey, their hatred and misanthropy flourishes unchecked in the vacuum. At present, no one acts to stop the rot - the army because they don't care enough, the observers because they aren't confident enough and the Palestinians because they're not suicidal enough to dare stand up to the bullying settler thugs.

 

And the longer it goes on, the easier it is to see why nothing will break the deadlock while the lunatics are running the asylum in Hebron. As long as the settlers are allowed to run riot, all the empty words of Ehud Olmert and co about dismantling outposts and appeasing their neighbours aren't worth the time of day. The settlers of Hebron need to be called to heel in the firmest of manners before anyone should believe that Israel is really serious about doing right by the Palestinians.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/seth_freedman/2008/01/the_cruelty_of_youths.html

[N.O.R.F]

An interesting take on the 'intergration' issue.

 

Do Stamford Hill's Jews need integration?

 

An extraordinary portrait of a closed community explodes the lazy rhetoric of social cohesion

 

The Haredi Jews of Stamford Hill in north London are a sober bunch. They only binge-drink once a year, at Purim, when there is a religious obligation to celebrate exuberantly the salvation of Babylonian Jews from a sixth-century genocide. Children wear fancy dress, men get drunk and dance boisterously. But the police don't get called out to break up fights in the synagogue. When it comes to law and order, the Haredim are model citizens.

 

But if the ultra-orthodox Jewish community doesn't go in for antisocial behaviour, in relations with people of other faiths they are not what you could call sociable. A Haredi man will not shake hands with a woman who is not his wife. It would be an impropriety verging on lasciviousness and, besides, he can't be sure she isn't menstruating, which under the strictest interpretation of Jewish law makes her unclean. Haredi women avoid eye contact with strangers. The community as a whole eschews contact with modern secular society. Television is frowned upon. The dress code for men - long, black coats, tall, black hats, white stockings on the Sabbath - is imported from eastern European ghettos of the 18th century.

 

The media don't pay much attention to the Haredim and they like it that way. But this week, BBC4 will screen a documentary by Vanessa Engle, an award-winning film-maker who gained unprecedented access to this hermetically sealed community. It is the first in a series of three films titled Jews, portraits of very different members of Britain's oldest religious minority. Engle's films are made of simple inquiry and observation. They are, like their subjects, not political.

 

But in 21st-century Britain, a minority that refuses to commune with the rest of society cannot hide from politics. Gordon Brown wants to promote public expressions of 'Britishness'. New arrivals will be expected to avow their loyalty, while established Britons will wave flags and hug each other on a new public holiday.

 

As a rule, policy only exists as a solution to a problem. In this case, the problem is a lack of what wonks and Whitehall call 'integration and social cohesion'. That deficit was brought to the government's attention by opinion polls that consistently show voters unhappy about high levels of immigration, and by the 7 July bombings, which showed how members of one community were so alienated from Britain as to be capable of treason. Since then, promoting 'integration' has become the shared aspiration of all mainstream parties. It is one of those lazy virtues that are easy to promote because no one in their right mind stands for the opposite. Who has a manifesto calling for disintegration?

 

The Haredim pose an interesting challenge to this tidy consensus. If separateness in Muslims and immigrant communities is bad because it leads to crime and disorder, would it be fine as long as the ghetto was trouble-free? If people obey the law, why should they integrate and, if they must, with whom? Rich and poor Britons don't mix socially. They don't even drink in the same pubs.

 

An effective policy is one that changes behaviour. If the problem is people driving too fast, make them slow down. But what, on a day-to-day basis, are devout Muslims or Haredi Jews expected to do to integrate in modern Britain. Take their children to the local playground? Shop at Ikea? They already do that. The same is true of 'social cohesion'. You can't put a bunch of people in a room with instructions to 'cohese'. It isn't even a word.

 

Last year, the government's Commission on Integration and Cohesion defined 'integration' vaguely as 'the process that ensures new residents and existing residents adapt to one another'. The commission also found that in most of the country that was already happening. Seventy-nine per cent of those polled thought that people from different backgrounds got on well in their area. That was equally true for areas with a high ethnic mix and more homogenous quarters. There was, however, a clear correlation between a lack of 'cohesion' and deprivation. Poor areas suffered higher crime, which made people suspicious of one another and less enthusiastic about racial diversity.

 

Anyone who tries to measure 'integration' ends up relying on definitions that are either banal (how many members of a minority speak English) or economically functional (how many have jobs). If politicians want something more profound - a convergence of behaviour towards shared habits and a limit on egregious displays of difference - the correct word is assimilation.

 

But to minority ears, that sounds like a threat of cultural annihilation. In another of Engle's films, we meet Jonathan Faith, a wealthy businessman who is devoting his retirement to halting the decline in Britain's mainstream Jewish population. In 1950, there were 450,000 Jews in the country; now, there are fewer than 270,000 and the rate of decline is accelerating. The problem is simple. Jews marry non-Jews and end up having non-Jewish children. 'Integrated' secular Judaism is dying.

 

The Haredim are bucking the trend. They number between 20,000 and 45,000 today, but are prolific. Families of eight or more children are not unusual. Is there a numerical point at which their cultural distinctness offends the secular liberal principle of 'integration'? Is it 100,000? A million? Is there a threshold beyond which the state will turn around and say, as it does of Muslims, 'the Jews must be integrated'?

 

If government wants to change the status of minorities, it can choose between two policy menus, one cultural and one economic. The cultural one is assimilation: setting a goal of a unified national identity and pushing people towards it, by shutting faith schools and banning public officials from wearing headscarves, for example.

 

The economic one is redistribution: addressing the problems of social mobility and poverty that actually cause tension between communities. Or it can go à la carte and try a bit of both. What it can't do is talk loosely about a policy of integration because, noble though it sounds, it doesn't actually mean anything.

 

· Nick Cohen is away

 

About this articleClose This article appeared in the Observer on Sunday June 15 2008 on p28 of the Comment section. It was last updated at 00:11 on June 15 2008.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/15/religion.communities

[N.O.R.F]

A maid is not a mother, even if the children turn to her first

Anees Sultan

 

Last Updated: September 27. 2008 11:34PM UAE / September 27. 2008 7:34PM GMT I was enviously eyeing a Khaleeji couple having a carefree meal at a hotel as I was yet again trying to explain to my son the merits of eating a good breakfast. My envy turned into anger, however, as I saw the couple’s children being fed by two maids at a distant table. Suddenly, the screams and the abandoned stroller in front of our room made sense. Of course… the children slept with their maids while their parents went out partying in the evening.

 

The Gulf has certainly changed. It is no longer man first followed by wife and children; it is man and wife, or mother and mobile, followed by a maid laden down with shopping bags while struggling to look after the children.

 

Many societies lament the break-up of the nuclear family. I was reading an item in a Western newspaper a few days ago that claimed the two poles of contemporary child rearing are neglect and overindulgence. Yet while many families here are guilty of the same, I have not seen such levels of outsourcing of parenthood to compare with those that can be found in the countries of the Gulf. The whole thing becomes a fashion statement, where children are dressed in designer clothing and are chauffeur-driven to buy fast food.

 

Imagine how confusing and frustrating all this must be if you are a child. You wake up to two mothers, one whom you learn to call Mama, but who always yells at the other (let’s call her Roselyn).

 

Roselyn is the one who feeds you and dresses you, and gives you any amount of French fries and candy when you start to yell. When Mama carries you or takes you out with her, it is Roselyn who sits next to you in the car as you go to the mall or to visit grandma. At the mall, it is Roselyn who takes you to the playroom with the other children. The trouble is, Roselyn will leave one day, and you will never see her again.

 

If having an army of helpers at the house shows off wealth, then perhaps more money should be spent on a qualified governess. But again, if a governess is too good with the children, and is young and educated, a possible outcome might be wife-replacement. Regular maids in local homes come from deprived backgrounds, most are illiterate and overworked – not exactly a threat to marital life, and not even close to suitable to raising children.

 

When did the full responsibilities of parenthood become so unfashionable here? I have seen children in Gulf homes turn to their maids and not their mothers when hurt or afraid. If you cannot be bothered with feeding your children, or tucking them up in bed, why have them?

 

There is pain and sacrifice in raising a child, but that is compensated by overwhelming joy when a child talks, walks, learns to ride a bicycle, or even laughs. Children will never receive total and unconditional love from maids. When it really counts, when there is a trade between acquiescing to junk food in exchange for a quiet chat with a friend; or grabbing a few minutes of freedom instead of insisting on good table manners, a child becomes a priority only to his parents. If children grow to respect television and worship games consoles, and their needs are answered by robotic maids – what values do we teach them?

 

In the large cities of our neighbours – such as Cairo or Damascus – I see young boys and girls on the streets helping their parents carry vegetables. They walk to school, or even play in the neighbourhood park. It is not beneath anybody to carry groceries; at least one learns how to pick a good head of lettuce and check the price of bread. Muscles, the otherwise disused body mass surrounded by layers of fat, get used, too.

 

Most importantly, our children need to learn some of the realities of life. You would think that city life toughens children, but the kind of sheltered existence so many lead in the cities of the Gulf never allows them contact with a challenge; they never learn how to be responsible. How many children with dedicated maids make their own beds? Scarier still is the thought of confused identity and lost cultural values.

 

After my irritation in the hotel restaurant, my son was delighted to point out similar scenes as we walked around the shopping malls. We saw so many that I decided to buy a digital camera so that I could capture some of the worst incidences, and maybe even put them on show at some stage.

 

Like it or not, my son will learn his table manners from me.

 

 

Anees Sultan is a writer and businessman based in Oman

 

http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080927/OPINION/237111918/1080

[N.O.R.F]

A literary tradition begins at home

Last Updated: November 16. 2008 7:43PM UAE / GMT Send to friend

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Literary culture has suffered in the Arab world since the days when libraries at Cordoba, Cairo and Tripoli were intellectual lights for all mankind. It was Arabs who inspired a literary tradition in the West to thrive by improving Chinese methods of paper production, and it was Arabs who preserved many of the great works of classical antiquity. Sadly, this great literary tradition has been diminished.

 

The Emirates Foundation has launched the International Prize for Arabic Fiction as a way for Arab writers and Arab literature to gain exposure. But as The National on Saturday reported, most of the 16 titles nominated for the award cannot be found in Abu Dhabi bookshops.

 

The lack of a vibrant literary culture here is striking because the region is world-renowned for its tradition of storytelling. Tales and myths were interwoven into the fabric of Bedouin life, passing down the society’s traditions, principles and heroes through the generations. As society has decamped from its Bedouin roots, a literary tradition has not emerged that can inscribe and guard these tales for posterity.

 

Some of the seminal works of Western literature, notably Boccaccio’s Decameron and Chaucer’s Canturbury Tales, were developed from oral fables subsequently written down in what were, at the time, vulgar dialects. It was these works that helped to bring Western literature out of the dark ages. But Boccaccio and Chaucer did not have to compete with television, which can too often dictate whose stories are important to tell, how they should be told and what values a society should celebrate. And many parents are often complicit in allowing television to usurp these important roles.

 

Literary tradition does not start in university classes: it begins with a culture of reading that is first cultivated in the home. One of the most important things schools can do in reforming education – and engaging parents in the process – is to have parents read to and with their children.

 

Naguib Mafouz, the first Arab winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, explained that his writing career began with simple stories that he wrote for his family as a boy. Before he died Mafouz said: “If the urge to write should ever leave me, I want that day to be my last.” But the urge to write and read great literature is not just an individual need. It must also be collective. No society that wishes to thrive can forget this.

 

http://thenational.ae/article/20081116/OPINION/654 248331/1033?template=opinion

[N.O.R.F]

Hmmm

 

If you want to learn Arabic, just tune in and hum along

Maryam Ismael

 

Last Updated: November 22. 2008 7:18PM UAE / November 22. 2008 3:18PM GMT Quran al Karim, Abu Dhabi’s local radio station is a national treasure, especially for me as a struggling Arabic learner. When people find out that I am a native English speaker they often ask me: “How can I learn English?” I say, listen to the radio. For the student of Arabic, I say exactly the same: listen to Arabic radio. And for those living in the UAE, my advice is to tune into Quran al Karim.

 

While the debate rages here about learning Arabic – about the standards of teaching the subject in schools, and whether migrant workers should be expected to speak the language – Quran al Karim provides an eloquent argument for the benefits of not just being able to talk in Arabic, but being able to listen and understand.

 

If anyone has any doubts about the virtues of radio as a teacher, they should take the time in the morning to listen to Sabah al Nour, the station’s breakfast show. It begins at 6am and gets the day off to a perfect start with a soothing voice, advice from the community, and helpful reminders of exactly why we are here on this earth.

 

When I first came to the UAE from Turkey, I had to make the mental switch from Turkish to Arabic, and while the two languages share many words, they are still very different. It was through Quran al Karim that I found a friendly voice and discovered the beauty of Arabic and the Quran. Even though, at the time, my understanding of Arabic was only minimal, the station made me feel that the meanings of the words were somewhere in my heart.

 

Amazingly, sometimes I found myself understanding some of the conversations on the talk shows and comprehending some of the ayats, verses of the Quran, completely. For the first time I was discovering the real truth of words that I had heard over and over but hadn’t previously understood. Slowly the words began to link together into a chain connecting me to the world outside.

 

What makes listening to Quran al Karim particularly enjoyable – and rewarding – is that unlike some radio stations, the presenters speak in a clear, slow manner, and more importantly, they speak in Fusha, classical Arabic. But the listener also gets to hear a range of accents and dialects thanks to the callers who phone in. Those telephone voices provide a panorama of our corner of the Arab world – and just in case you didn’t quite make out what the caller was saying, the presenter gives you a summary. Invaluable for any student of Arabic.

 

And I was reassured recently that I was not the only non-Arab listener who had discovered the merits of Quran al Karim when a German man sent an SMS text message to say that he was not Muslim but he had learnt so much about Islam through the station.

 

For non-listeners who might now be thinking that it all sounds a little dull and worthy, I can assure them that it isn’t. If you haven’t heard the wonderful nasheeds, you are truly missing something: the harmonising of the voices of the munsheds, the singers. Their deep tones and soft melodies transport the listener into the heart of Arabic and the sweetness of Islam.

 

Arabic and Islam are naturally entwined, but the religious connotations of the language shouldn’t scare people away, thinking that they will have a sudden conversion if they learn the language. It is certainly true that many phrases invoke Allah – for instance, Allah ‘atik al Affiyah (Allah give you success); Allah Khalik (Allah keep you) – but they typify the key characteristic of Arabic: its essential courtesy and caring for the well-being of others. (And please, Arabic speakers, forgive my translations. I know there will be some who will say “that is not what those phrases mean”. But that is what they mean for me. I am willing to learn if anyone is willing to teach me.)

 

Learning something new can only make your life in the Emirates easier. I think that this is the message that should be sent out to those who are thinking, why should I learn Arabic at all? Because really, you are only living on the fringes of this nation if you don’t understand and speak the language.

 

Listening to the radio, I can hear the voices of my neighbours, friends, and caring strangers, who offer advice on everything from how to run your life to how to get a good night’s sleep. All of this they find in the ultimate resource, the Quran and the hadiths of the Prophet Mohammed.

 

It makes me feel that I am a part of society and in the know, and it gives me a new outlook on how to start my day. Besides, I always need a nasheed to hum along to in the morning.

 

 

Maryam Ismail is a sociologist who divides her time between the UAE and America

http://thenational.ae/article/20081123/OPINION/621 709240/1080