Spain - Franco is back

As British expatriates are abandoning the Spanish sunshine due to the devaluation of the pound against the Euro, Spain, predominantly dependent on tourism, is sinking deeper into recession. With the economic downturn comes a rise in right-wing politics, as is also the case in other countries of Europe. Whilst some countries view this development and its concomitant racism as a threat, Spain seems to embrace it with open arms. For the erstwhile dictatorship where fascism lingered another three decades after the end of the second world war, being a police state seems only too natural. For foreign visitors to Spain the arrogance of the Guardia Civil, the Spanish paramilitary police, and the deference showed to them by civilians and officials alike are becoming more evident.

Case study Girona airport: an airport entirely dependent on Ryanair who fly to numerous European destinations as well as Morocco from there. Many come here for the sun, but many are transit passengers on a stop-over to another Ryanair destination, since in spite of the substandard service, queuing system and hand luggage checks bordering on harassment, Ryanair flights, heavily subsidised by the regions to which they fly, remain the cheapest way to get around Europe at the moment. Whereas most airports in Europe only have X-ray machines for departure check-in, Spanish airports also feature X-ray machines for arrivals, which are used discretionary. Discretion always leaves room for abuse, and where nationalist tendencies prevail, this takes the form of racial profiling.

From observation it appears that travellers of Moroccan appearance (and for the Spanish police that includes all manners of Asians) stand a much greater chance of being asked to put their hand luggage through a scanner on arrival. So far, this is only a minor inconvenience, but the scanning, although showing that no contraband is being carried, is frequently followed by a passport check after which the inspecting officer walks off with the document to a security office room where he photocopies the passport and enters details on his computer for a purpose undisclosed to the perplexed passenger. Any attempt to question the purpose or even legality of the move is swiftly followed by the questioner being subjected to prolonged questioning (exclusively in Spanish and often deteriorating into being shouted at) before he is eventually released without explanation. There have been cases where police locked the door of the examination room from the inside before intimidating the "suspects". Demands for an interpreter are regularly ignored.

A similar treatment is sometimes also meted out to passengers on departure check-in, although it is less serious since the passenger wants to leave Spain anyway and non-cooperation could hardly have the more damaging result of being denied entry to the country. Nonetheless, it is disruptive and may eventually turn the visit to, or stop-over in, Spain into an experience the weary traveller does not want to repeat. One should think that Spain can hardly afford turning people away who might help save the Spanish economy by spending their money there, but the police at least have no such scruples.

On an occasion, when I challenged their inappropriate behaviour, they responded by subjecting me to the very same treatment of running off with my passport and subjecting me to questioning, the process being prolonged by the fact that the examining officer was unable to operate his own computer equipment! I did manage to arrange for an interpreter who, however, seemed clearly awe-stricken by the police officers and more intent on arguing their case than translating between the parties. What I was repeatedly told was that when you are in Spain, Spanish police can do whatever they want, basta. A reminder that Spain was a signatory to numerous European conventions cut no ice.

Officers with the following badge numbers currently have an official complaint filed against them with the municipality of Catalunya or the airport authority: 2510, 84613, 88336, 99142. It remains to be seen whether they are at all accountable and effective checks on an abuse of police power exist in Spain - the historic evidence is not encouraging.

Terrorising the laws of physics

What do 9/11 and the liquid bomb plot have in common? They both replace reality with make-belief by seriously violating the laws of physics. And they represent a propaganda effort by today's war governments Joseph Goebbels would be proud of, thereby demonstrating that the masses in a democratic society can be easily fooled through the repeated use of media and are thus unable to make informed choices - dictatorship by consent.

Let's start with 9/11: According to the propaganda the heat of burning kerosene fuel from the aircraft which hit the high-rise buildings melted the steel reinforcements and made the steel/concrete structure collapse. This is an impossibility unless all the teachings of physics are going to be more radically revised than ever before: the hottest possible temperature of burning kerosene is 825°C, whilst steel starts melting at 1510°C. If burning kerosene melted steel or other metals (such as aluminium, with a lower melting point), airo engines would arrive liquidised before any jet plane ever made a safe landing. Even if the steel melted, the collapse of the building would have been gradual and not immediate; instead it simply disappeared into its own footprint with all the concrete being pulverised and none of the lower floors putting up resistance to the collapsing upper ones. According to the current state of the art of physics, this can only be achieved by a controlled demolition, and recent finds of thermite in the rubble support this claim. Yet, the myth wins over the facts.

Likewise with the liquid bomb plot for which three alleged Muslim terrorists have just been convicted of plotting mass murder in the sky. According to the official propaganda story, the key ingredient was hydrogen peroxide, readily available as hair bleach or medicated mouthwash, albeit at low concentrations. To buy it at the high concentrations needed for manufacturing an explosive would spark an immediate detection. But as the story goes, this was to be mixed with sulphuric acid and acetone (also known as nail polish remover) and smuggled in drinks bottles onto an aircraft together with detonators. Fantastic! Here's the physics of it: if you mix high-strength hydrogen peroxide with sulphuric acid it gets very hot, so you do get some kind of a mini explosion, or more likely a big splash. It would also soon melt through the plastic drinks bottle you were going to carry it in. To turn it into a potent explosive you still have to mix in the acetone, which has to be done at below zero temperatures, typically around -78°C, if you want an explosive you can ignite later. Now it does get very cold in the upper airways, but not inside the pressurised aircraft cabin. The very best our wannabe terrorist could achieve is to injure himself in the airplane's bathroom. The wild stories of ripping open the fuselage of the aircraft are pure imagination. By the way, airport security were not at all bothered about the potency of the liquids: On the day John Reid announced the discovery of the plot, they simply poured all liquids confiscated from the travelling public into one big container, and nothing went bang. Of course, the foul smell of sulphuric acid and acetone would immediately have revealed any harmful chemicals from amongst the gallons of harmful water and body shampoo taken of the unsuspecting public.

The stuff described makes for a nice chemical experiment with the potential to cause serious injury to the experimenter. It does not make a liquid explosive with the potential to blow a hole in an airliner, such as e.g. nitroglycerine. There are no ready-to-mix liquid explosive components out there, which detonate when mixed together, and any self-respecting chemical scientist knows that. All the whole saga tells us is that the teaching of physics and chemistry in American and British schools is very poor. And that the jury members were schooled in Britain.

Ramadan confusion

It is satisfying that this year's Ramadan got off to an almost uniform start. With the exception of socialist Libya and secular Turkey, there were no countries this year who saw the moon long before it could even make an appearance or used calculated astronomical data whilst confusing the birth of the moon with the time when it might possibly be seen by the naked eye. Maybe the disquiet amongst rank and file Muslims about lack of unity and leadership has finally reached those declaring the start and end dates of Ramadan - we'll have to wait and see when it comes to the end of the month, of course.
Meanwhile, we can turn our attention to more detailed timing issues. Gone are the days when mosques turned to the experts (such as the Royal Observatory or the Met Office in the UK) to obtain their prayer times. A proliferation of online prayer time calculators means every mosque and association can now publish their own time table for Ramadan, and sadly they hardly ever agree with each other. One of the reasons is that you only get out what you put in, of course, and few mosque secretaries know how to handle the options when, for example, choosing between civil, nautical or astronomical twilight. For the observant Muslim following their timetable, this can make all the difference of starting to fast an hour earlier or later in the morning.
But the problem goes a little deeper. Most of the online prayer time calculators, such as at Islamicity.com, only go by the longitude and latitude of a geographical location, ignoring elevation data. Other, non-Muslim, sunrise and sunset calculators do the same, e.g. the world clock calculator at timeanddate.com, but at least they provide a disclaimer: "The times for sunrise and sunset are based on the ideal situation, where no hills or mountains obscure the view and the flat horizon is at the same altitude as the observer... on a high mountain with the horizon below the observer, the sunrise will be earlier and sunset later than listed." Some even state that the data are for guidance only and not fit for any particular purpose.
No such disclaimer is given with the online Muslim prayer calculators which, by definition, are meant to be for a particular purpose, namely to determine when to pray and when to fast. Yet, most only provide "flat" data without correction for altitude. Here is an example: Cranfield airport has a published sunrise on the first of Ramadan (22 August 2009) of 5:55 and a sunset of 20:15; because these figures are used for aeronautical purposes they are accurate and authoritative for the location. The prayer calculator at Islamicity.com returns a sunrise time of 5:58 and sunset time of 20:12, three minutes out at either end, because it assumes that this central England location is at sea level when its actual elevation is 358 feet. For higher level locations the error would be quite substantial.
There are prayer calculating programs which allow for the input of elevation data, such as the extremely useful DOS program written many years ago by Dr. Monzur Ahmed whose essay on the subject would be a useful primer for mosques wanting to publish their DIY timetables. Essentially, what is required in order to start and break the daily fast at the same time within the same location is exactly the same as what is required to have a uniform start and end date of Ramadan - education and leadership, or: a proper understanding of the issues involved coupled with the willingness by Muslim leaders to put their own self-interest aside for the benefit of wider unity.

When a terrorist is not a terrorist

Thank goodness, British justice is consistent - unfair, unequal, but consistent. Prosecutors and judges make sure that the lines don't get blurred. Nowhere is this more important than when it comes to what defines who is with us and who is against us: terrorism is an exclusively Muslim hallmark, and it must stay this way.

Prosecutors and the bench at Glasgow Sheriff Court knew the distinction. There was a man before them who had threatened to blow up Glasgow Central mosque, called himself a "proud racist" and promised to execute one Muslim a day until all mosques in Scotland would be closed. A man with a problem, but definitely not a terrorist. To be a terrorist you have to confess Islam. MacGregor hates Islam and Muslims, and his patriotic choice is reflected in the leniency of his sentence. Three years probation provided he seeks occasional psychriatric help.

Contrast this with Isa Ibrahim, a disturbed convert to Islam, who was also a heroin addict and fancied to blow up Bristol shopping centre. He didn't have the capability and in his first experiment with explosives promptly injured himself. He was a lot more in need for psychriatric help than the proud racist MacGregor, but judges at Winchester Crown court knew that the moment he had converted to Islam he had crossed the line to becoming a terrorist and awarded him a life sentence. Ironically, it was his local mosque who reported him to the police, thus giving the media another frenzy to feed on about the dangerous Muslims in our midst.

Or take the "lyrical terrorist" Samina Malik. Her crime was to write poetry. She didn't plan or threaten to kill anybody. Her poetry was tasteless, but no more so than being a proud racist. At the Old Bailey, judges knew the difference, and gave her a nine months suspended jail sentence under terrorism legislation.

Take Peter Stephen Hill from Skipton in Yorkshire, a former territorial army soldier who had amassed a large amount of explosives. A risk analyst by trade, he knew he would not be branded a terrorist if found out. He was charged at Leeds Magistrates court under the "Explosive Substances Act 1883". By the time the matter was due in the Crown Court the prosecution withdrew from the case.

Or former British National Party candidate Robert Cottage from Lancashire who kept all kinds of chemicals for the purpose of making explosives in preparation of a civil war and who also wanted to shoot the then prime minister Tony Blair (many Brits did, but he meant it) - he also was charged only under laws relating to explosives. Sure, it's naughty wanting to take out the prime minister, but at least he had the right reasons. There was no doubt he wanted an Islamic State to emerge from the civil war he was preparing for. He was jailed for a mere two-and-a-half years and the media kept it all low key.

One could give many more examples. But more telling is that the terrorism charge is usually not brought to court but used as a blunt bludgeon to hit innocent Muslims with. Like the Pakistani students rounded up and expelled without evidence when an anti-terrorist police chief Bob Quick cocked up by showing an open dossier to press photographers. Or the Bengali Kalam brothers in East London who had there house raided and got seriously injured in the process, followed by a media smear campaign, all on the basis of unreliable police "intelligence". Or Barbar Ahmed, brutally assaulted by police and still fighting a US extradition warrant. Or the thousands of Muslims who get stopped and searched going about their ordinary daily business. And thousands of Muslims have been arrested and held under terrorism legislation to date only to be released without charge. The police would love to hold them all indefinitely.

You can say what you like about the British justice system. It may be antiquated, slow, expensive, inefficient. But the charge of ambiguity in distinguishing those who are with us from those who are against us cannot be levied against it: British injustice remains consistent.

Iran - lessons in democracy

The streets of Tehran are quiet for the moment, not because the UN secretary general and US president Obama spoke openly in support of the Iranian people against the Iranian government, but because the Mousavi opposition realised that they were unable to back up those words with anything else.
Now, after the Iranian version of the Ukrainian orange revolution didn't succeed in bringing down a government that has long been an eye-sore to Israel, the United States and their followers, foremost Britain, it may be time for some comparisons.

First of all, if any administration can be said to be out of tune with public opinion, the US and UK must come amongst the first. Obama is still riding a wave of support, but only because his predecessor was so immensely unpopular. When actions won't follow his words, the honeymoon will soon be over. In the UK, during the recent local and European elections the party of the yet unelected British prime minister just about received 15% of the votes cast, with the turnout being around 35%, in other words, only just over 5% of those eligible to vote supported him. Hardly a strong position from which to lecture the world on democracy. In contrast, the turnout at Iran's presidential elections was around 80% and president Ahmedinejad secured 63% of the votes cast, so more than half the country supports him. I know, it's hard to believe, how can the Iranians support somebody we, the self-styled champions of democracy, don't like.

To put it all down to electoral fraud is ludicrous. Iran is not as advanced in pulling off the kind of scheme that saw George W. Bush junior elected against all the odds. They don't use electronic counting machines sponsored by the office holder. They still do a hand count, closely watched but numerous monitors. If the elections in Iran had been fraudulent, the figures would have been of the kind we regularly see from Egypt, that other "democratic" haven beloved by America. Instead, Iran has been very open about the results, and those published about Iranians casting their votes from abroad are most instructive. Whilst one would expect Iranians in Europe or Australia to vote for Mousavi, it comes as a surprise that he also carried the vote in such suspected Islamic strongholds as Islamabad, Quetta, Lahore or even Kabul. Even in Jerusalem Ahmedinejad, no matter how vociferously he champions the Palestinian cause, fared poorly amongst his compatriots. On the other hand, he has support in Saudi Arabia. No-one in their right mind, if tasked with engineering a result, could have come up with these figures. And the votes cast abroad would have been a lot easier to edit than those cast under the watchful eyes of monitors inside Iran.

The simple fact is that if Ahmedinejad only presided over a country made up of the capital Tehran and expatriate communities scattered around the world, he would have lost. But in Iran's hinterland he is immensely popular because, unlike Western prime ministers and presidents, he remains in touch with them and their aspirations. And like it or not, they are also deeply religious. It is true that the Iranian economy is doing just as badly as, let's say, the British. Inflation is rampant, because the Islamic reforms of the revolution never extended to the financial system and interest has never been abolished. The economy remains strongly in the hands of a few powerful family oligarchies, and there is a high level of corruption. But that corruption does not extend to the personage of the president who has an integrity that would make British MPs or the Italian prime minister Berlusconi blush in spite of their lack of shame generally. Ahmedinejad refuses to be caught by the trappings of high office, does not wear a suit nor live in a luxury home paid for by the tax payer. Nobody could accuse him of excesses of the kind which recently pushed British politics into a deep crisis.

The US and UK may not like Ahmedinejad and prefer Mousavi, but in doing so they cannot claim to speak for the Iranian people. Western governments have a long history of viewing the world through their tinted spectacles and committing severe blunders by failing to understand other cultures. They expected to be welcomed by Iraqis as liberators and thought the indiscriminate bombing of Pakistani villagers should create stability in the region. Shouldn't Obama be mourning those innocent lives lost before turning his attention to Iran? It is too early to prove whether US clandestine operations were behind the opposition protests in the first place, hoping to unseat the Iranian government after having lost the appetite for another war, although it is telling that the protesters always seem to have English placards to hand, as if they want to be seen by those outside rather than by their own people. Be that as it may, I still lay the blame for the heavy price Iranians paid in innocent lives during those unrests at the doorstep of Western governments and media for having hyped up the loser's hopes of getting the vote annulled.

One could now talk about the heavy-handed response of the Iranian security forces in dealing with what were not merely peaceful demonstrations but an attempt to bring down the elected government. Here, too, Western hypocrisy abounds. The death of "Neda" does the rounds of Youtube and Twitter because she was an innocent bystander caught up in the fray. But doesn't that equally apply to Ian Tomlinson whose death the Metropolitan police caused at the G20 summit? In response to that revelation British police arrested a dozen Pakistani students under pretended terrorist charges to divert attention. The charges were subsequently dropped, but the students told they would be deported anyway as a security risk, although they had done nothing wrong. I don't remember UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon offering similar advice to the British government as he did to the Iranians about use of force against civilians or a call for an immediate stop to politically motivated arrests.

What we have, in sum total, is another political blunder by Western governments and media, who by believing their own delusions and openly showing their cards and bias destroyed the goodwill extended to them by the Iranian government after Obama's election. I guess from here it's politics as usual.

Europe speaks Arabic

A book under this title by Dr. V. Abdur Rahim deserves wider circulation as a potential bridge-builder. The book's key achievement is to popularise the subject of the influence of the Arabic language in those of Europe for lay readers. It is in no way as detailed and comprehensive as the most thorough work on the subject so far, the doctoral thesis by T.A Ismail entitled "Classic Arabic as the Ancestor of Indo-European Languages and Origin of Speech" which, sadly, will be hard to find even in the best stocked library. In that book, Ismail compares Classical Arabic with Latin and Old English and tries to establish a sequential relationship. Rahim makes no such claim. He is content with showing that Arabic, due to the great influence of Islam throughout European history, left its indelible mark. The book, published by Goodword (ISBN 978-81-7898-639-5) does not attempt to ascribe any kind of superiority to Arabic. And whilst well researched, it is not aimed at the linguist. Its stated intention is and understanding of "our common cultural heritage". In his preface the author gives ample credit to European achievements by saying that "in many cases Arabic provided the name and the raw material, and Europe developed it into a highly sophisticated finished product". He also cites numerous examples where European words of Arabic origin re-entered the Arabic language with a new meaning, for example the French "bougie d'allumage" or spark plug, which traces its history to the city of Bijayah in Algeria, famous for the candle-wax it exported.
Europe speaks Arabic makes reference to English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian as well as German, Dutch, Danish and Swedish, plus Russian, Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian and Greek and Albanian. Of course, many English readers are aware that Arabic has given them words for stars, mathematics, exotic foodstuffs, such as coffee, and seafaring, such as admiral, but they would be well surprised in learning that that most English location of Trafalgar Square takes its name from the Arabic al-taraf al-agharr, or that the exchequer takes his name from the chequered cloth covering the table on which the accounts were reckoned, and that in turn via Arabic from the Persian Shah, the title of the king in chess. The word subsequently denoted a monetary instrument (check/cheque) and was re-imported with this meaning into the Arabic language.
Some of the book's quotes of Shakespearean and other old English writings in support of the lineage of a word are an absolute delight. My only criticism is the way the author chose to present his subject. The artificially contrived dialogue between Ahmad and Eric, the former teaching the latter about the Arabic origins of English terms, a form very popular in Arabic language school books, strikes me as most unsuitable for a European audience. A straight-forward running narrative would have served the purpose better.

Does God do politics?

Does God do Politics? This is, of course, a rhetorical question forming the subject of a debate I will be having with Prof. John White of the Institute of Education, a secularist for whom God does not exist, and Peter Hitchens of the Daily Mail, who believes in God but accepts the fallacy that secularism can provide a neutral playing field for both believers and non-believers. The debate has been organised by the dialoguewithislam.org for Thursday 21st May at Ebrahim Community College, 80 Greenfield Road (rear of East London Mosque), London E1 1EJ, and is chaired by al-Jazeera news presenter Hamish MacDonald. Kick-off is at 6.30 pm.

Purpose of the debate, followed by questions from the floor, is to explore both the way politicians use religion as well as the way adherents of religion use politics. The key question is not merely whether God exists or interferes in human affairs, but rather to what extent the believes of those who either affirm or deny his existence should have the right for the public engagement to be governed by those believes. When it comes to peaceful coexistence, will a secular framework provide a more tolerant environment or a religious one. Does the degree of tolerance differ between religions? Should there be limits to what can be tolerated? Is the separation of religious practice and public life workable or even desirable? If man becomes the sovereign instead of God, will inevitably abuse his power?

The two ex-leaders, George W. Bush and Tony Blair, both headed secular states yet repeatedly made references to God whom they claimed to have on their side. At the same time Bishops are criticised when they comment on social and political issues, and Islam is seen as a radical threat to Western liberal values. How can it be explained that exponents of the secular establishment appeal to religious sentiments whilst adherents of religions are told not to allow their faith to colour or govern their politics? Is the rift between the church and science a purely Western phenomenon that blinds Europe and America when dealing with the contribution religion has to make towards the progress of society? Or is the animosity against Islam a natural response from a secular elite seeing its power base threatened after having wrestled it at high cost from the Christian churches? Has liberalism become illiberal the moment it took the reigns of power?

Expect a lively debate. Advance tickets are available for £2 at dialoguewithislam.org; tickets at the door are £3.