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shame

coromandal — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:59:02 +0000

Shame leads to violence. It is like a contagion that at its induction freezes and isolates and traps; and over a lifetime eventually surfaces in rage. Salman Rushdie’s novel Shame is structured around a real life event of shame: a father in London kills his daughter, in the street, because she has slept with a white boy. Rushdie changes the story for the book. In it a father shames his daughter from birth, because he wanted to have a boy. She becomes a lightening rod for shame with a capacity for holding more and more of it. And the men around her match her capacity for being shamed with their own capacity for perpetuating it. Eventually she takes a revenge of sorts, by seducing and decapitating four men.

Rushdie’s characters are metaphors for Pakistani politics in the 1970’s. The phenomenon of shaming and its relationship to violence exists at the micro and macro level. It is viral and corrupts an individual life and a state at the same time.

Here is a description of the topic of shame in the book, by Abdulrazak Gurnah. You can read the entire article here.

Sufiya Zenobia is born a girl when Raza Hyder wanted a boy. At her birth, he rages at the medical staff as if somehow his anger will force them to change the baby’s gender. Sufiya Zenobia blushes for shame. From the moment of her birth, Sufiya Zenobia is made inadequate, shamed by her gender. As the novel progresses she comes to represent an unavoidable capacity for feeling shame while the world that dictates to her, the world of men, cannot restrain itself from shamelessness. Rushdie’s argument suggests a gendered sense of ‘honour’, a public sense in which men fraudulently disguise cynicism by investing honour in the conduct of women, in the process dictating to them, while conducting themselves with cruelty and self-indulgence. Women, who are required to submit to what has been invested in them and are made inadequate by this submission, feel shame. Sufiya Zenobia cannot prevent herself blushing for shame, and is a literal representation of this gendered condition, which is attenuated further by making her retarded by illness to a permanent mental age of a six-year-old. So her blushes, in other words, are not from a heightened moral sense but the metaphorical conditioning of her gender.

In Rushdie’s argument, humiliation and shame will inevitably lead to violence, which is as much about the oppression of women in Pakistan (and Islam) as about the whole society. It is Sufiya who demonstrates this argument. The first occasion is when she tears off the heads of 218 turkeys, ‘then reached down into their bodies to draw their guts up through their necks’ (Shame, p. 138). Later, in the novel’s closing stages, she fulfils what this early outburst of prodigious violence promises. She tempts four nameless men to have sex with her, inverting the right of Muslim men to take four wives, then she pulls their heads off:

Shame walks the streets of night. In the slums four youths are transfixed by those appalling eyes, whose deadly yellow fire blows like a wind through the lattice-work of the veil. They follow her to the rubbish-dump of doom, rats to her piper, automata dancing in the all-consuming light from the black-veiled eyes. Down she lies […] Four husbands come and go. Four of them in and out, and then her hands reach for the first boy’s neck. The others stand still and wait their turn.(Shame, p. 219)

Her humiliation at the hands of men who should have loved her, her father Raza Hyder and her husband Omar Khayyam Shakil, have turned her into a Beast. Rushdie celebrates Sufiya’s violence as liberation, or makes Omar Khayyam Shakil ponder along these lines, but the real force behind this figuration of women is not so much to suggest a route to fulfilment, but to issue a warning to the rulers of Pakistan. Out of the encounter of shame and shamelessness will come violence. Not surprisingly, Shame was banned in Pakistan, although it was short-listed for the Booker Prize.

From The Cambridge Companion to Salman Rushdie

Edited by Abdulrazak Gurnah

University of Kent, Canterbury

Review: Vicky Christina Barcelona

peacefuljitters — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:08:37 +0000

[caption id="attachment_78" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Victor Bello/Weinstein Company"][/caption]

I recently saw Woody Allen's latest film, Vicky Christina Barcelona. It was wonderful. A comedy of errors, VCB follows two young American women, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Christina (Scarlett Johansson, in her third straight film with Allen), during their travels around Spain and their journeys in and out of love.

The talented Spanish actor Javier Bardem, in his first major role since Anton Chicurh, the sociopathic serial killer in No Country for Old Men (2007), plays a celebrated Spanish painter who, with his European romantic charm, attempts to seduce both Vicky and Christina. Penelope Cruz delivers a great performance as Juan Antonio's deranged, trigger-happy ex-wife.

As Vicky and Christina encounter lust at almost every turn, they slowly start realizing that the idea of "true love" seems drastically far away. The idea of marriage, or harmonious monogamy, seems to be an unattainable, imagined ideal or concept.

Yet again, Allen has proved that the Coolidge effect is as real as global warming.

As his characters try to resolve their mental tug-of-wars between their superegos and ids, trying to tell the difference between lust and love, Allen presents a film that celebrates the power and passion of spontaneous erotic lust, while at the same time recognizes, solemnly, the inevitable transience of love.

These themes are classic Woody, but they haven't manifested themselves entirely since his work in the late seventies. Manhattan (1979) and Annie Hall (1977) rank among, in my opinion, Woody's best works. In the talented Scarlett Johansson, Allen has found his new Diane Keaton.

While his two most recent films, Match Point (2005) and Scoop (2006), are both solid flicks, Vicky Christina Barcelona deserves to be viewed as one of Allen's best. Oddly enough, Allen, according to his Wikipedia entry, has said that along with The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) and Stardust Memories (1980), considers Match Point to be one of his best three films.

I find a lot of similarities in the works of Woody Allen and Salman Rushdie. Allen and Rushdie's texts share, among other things, 1) a fascination with eroticism and seduction; 2) a preoccupation with "the arts" and "high culture"; and finally, 3) an interest in the (love) lives of thinkers, artists and writers (in other words, "cultural producers"). Moreover, both the works of Allen and Rushdie are laced with a high dose of Freudian psychoanalytic theory.

For more on Vicky Christina Barcelona, read Manohla Dargis' review of the film for the New York Times.

James Wood on Hysterical Realism

disaphorism — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:07:20 +0000

It's a bit dated (year 2000), but I love literati super-savant James Wood's deconstruction of the Rushdie-Wolfe-Zadie Smith inhabited subgenre he wittily dubs "hysterical realism."

This is not magical realism. It is hysterical realism. Storytelling has become a kind of grammar in these novels; it is how they structure and drive themselves on. The conventions of realism are not being abolished but, on the contrary, exhausted, and overworked. Appropriately, then, objections are not made at the level of verisimilitude, but at the level of morality: this style of writing is not to be faulted because it lacks reality--the usual charge against botched realism--but because it seems evasive of reality while borrowing from realism itself. It is not a cock-up, but a cover-up.

Lest we go too far down Wood's way, check out Zadie Smith's excellent response.

But even if this were not true, frankly, literature is - or should be - a broad church. Whatever the weaknesses of the various writers Wood mentioned, I don't believe he would wish for a literary landscape missing a book such as Rushdie's Midnight's Children or DeLillo's White Noise; the very books, in fact, which have cast such a tremendous shadow over two generations of American and English fiction. Yes, Jonathan Franzen's soon-to-turn-up The Corrections is a blatant attempt to redress that imbalance and return the intimate voice to a DeLilloesque structure, but I wonder if even that isn't an artificial project. I read Flaubert and Nabokov for the varicoloured intimacies of life; I read Zora Neale Hurston to hear the songs of love and earth, and I read White Noise to experience, yes, a Frankfurt school comedy, in which every boy, girl, man, woman, black, white, lesbian, Jew and Muslim speaks in exactly the same way: like DeLillo. When you pick up DeLillo, you know that's what's coming, just as when you pick up Carver you give up the hope of finding talking dogs or octagonal cheeses. So it goes. (For flippancy and short sentences, Vonnegut's your man.)

We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.

New Yorker Fiction Podcast

kristynwinters — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 19:26:59 +0000

Jeffrey Eugenides is on the New Yorker's fiction podcast with Deborah Treisman this month reading Harold Brodkey's "Spring Fugue." They talk the anthology Eugenides edited and why he's drawn to Brodkey. If you've never listened to the New Yorker fiction podcast, do. There are some lovely writers reading stories not their own, and then a bit of discussion with Treisman. Beware, though. Sometimes I find it unsettling to hear an author's voice after I've read their novels. Fortunately, Eugenides has a nice voice and there was nothing too strange (in the sense of "oh, I didn't imagine him sounding like that").

If you've got some time, or if you have household chores, check out this dialogue between Salman Rushdie and Eugenides. They discuss Rushdie's most recent book among other things. Eugenides tells a story about trying to visit Rushdie when he was young and had just read Midnight's Children.

Eugenides reminds me why I love good writing. At the sake of sounding like a spiritual weirdo, there's something transcendent about the sense of awe that comes from brilliant writing. I think of O'Connor's Mystery and Manners, in which she touches on mystery in religion and literature. I suppose all good art (whatever that means or however you would define it) brings a person to their knees (hopefully not in idol worship but in appreciation of the creation, perhaps the Creator, too, at least for the Christian [if I were to digress further, I'd mention Romans 1:20). For example, I have never liked swimming. I don't like getting wet and I'd much rather be running if I have to be active. But after watching the U.S. Olympic swimmers and Michael Phelps' historic feat last night, I was awestruck by their strength and athleticism and the sheer technicalities of their sport. Ryan said he's become "a student of swimming" in the last week, and he explained a little about the way the "wake" affects a swimmer. (Forgive me my ignorance of swimming terminology, and please ignore any blunders.) At any rate, I think a person can find beauty and meaning in things as vastly different as sport and art and science and even cleaning. A person who does something well allows others to see the beauty in their work (be it auto mechanics, landscaping, or writing). I'm reminded of Donald Miller's initial words in Blue Like Jazz.

My Enchantress...

Nikhil — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 10:59:58 +0000

Last weekend, I received a courier from a dear friend, which contained a copy of Salman Rushdie's Enchantress of Florence! I was completely taken aback by this gift! This was a book I've always wanted to read and apparently I'd mentioned it to her sometime, when we were both shopping for books, and she remembered that and bought me the book! It would have been great if she were still in town to hand it over to me personally, but I guess I can't ask for too much! :)

I opened the book and she'd written the sweetest message in it.

She said:

NIkhil,

When the Shah of Persia said a 100 years ago, "Never trust a woman," he was perfectly right. The fact that this book comes to you by courier (instead of delivery-by-hand) and your intention of gifting me that "cute yellow thing that says Ditcher," all stands testimony to the Shah's words! :D

It's been fun knowing you... and its a disaster to know that you'll never let me forget you... Well, I guess I can live with some misgivings! :D

She didn't give me a chance to reply to these words. I wish I had had more time with her to actually tell her the things I've always wanted to tell her. But I guess, these are the misgivings she talked about. So, in the hope that she reads this, here's my reply:

Friendships are often overrated, and in most cases, a very strong bond takes years to grow and loads of patience to nurture. But in our case, I think it's almost a miracle how quickly we built such a good friendship. It's never happened to me before, and I don't think it'll ever happen again. Some people are just meant to come into our lives, and when you did, I think it was perhaps the best day of my life so far! :D

Thanks for being such a wonderful friend, and thanks for a lovely book and the even lovelier words inside them! I'll treasure this always, more so because it's a gift from you! :)

I'll miss you a lot, and I hope we keep running into each other! You truly are my Enchantress! :)

Mind the age gap

wanobe — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 10:56:23 +0000

Twice their age and far less attractive, older men like Ronnie Woods, John Cleese and Salman Rushdie continue to attract gorgeous young girlfriends. Wanobe's reporter Sara O'Meara talked to author Judy Astley and others about the appeal of older men and why these relationships are usually doomed.

For many folks, relationships between older men and young woman seem crazy and unnatural. I mean why would a 19-year-old Russian waitress choose to date a man like 61-year-old Ronnie Wood?

But Ronnie's nnot the only older man to bag a younger woman. At 61, Salman Rushdie's latest squeeze is 27, John Cleese recently began dating an American woman aged 34, and 32-year-old DJ Mark Ronson is reportedly planning to marry 19-year-old model Daisy Lowe.

Some beleive that the age gap relationship is a trade off. The younger lady is looking for someone to make her feel safe and the older man is looking for someone who doesn't answer back and is a trophy.

Christine Northam, a counsellor for relationship service Relate, told our reporter that couples with a large age difference need to work harder than most. She says that a large age gap can create a minefield of potential problems.

"Practically and emotionally you're always going to be at different stages of development in terms of your career, your social life and starting a family. Success would entirely depend on exploring these possible areas of conflict and facing them head on."

However, fiction writer Judy Astley who explores the age gap idea in her new romantic novel, Other People's Husbands., believes 'a relationship with a big gap can have an added spark.'

"I know a couple, she's in her 50s and he's over 80. He's kept her fairly balanced, and she's kept him young. He still can dive in to the sea off a high rock."

Now that is what I call cool and living life out loud regardless of age. Check out the full article under the Family category in our News, tips and reviews section. I think in my next blog I'll look at older women with younger men.

Have fun, rock on, friends!

Books, self-published and otherwise

tsrosenberg — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:27:50 +0000

A story broke in the UK about a 93-year-old woman who sold her first novel and received pots of money. Turns out she didn't, because it was a vanity press (which, like most vanity presses, prefers to be called a 'self-publisher'). Finally, the truth is coming out, but of course the corrections won't get half the press attention as the erroneous story, because 'nice old lady brings out self-published book and wants to help her friends avoid care homes' isn't half as newsworthy as 'first novel earns pots of money and encourages the delusions of anyone who thinks self-publishing is the route to riches.'

(There are plenty of sensible reasons to self-publish, but fame and fortune are not two of them.)

Anyway, I'm not reading books lately, which is partly because I seem to have picked up a work ethic somewhere and have been working on the novel as well as a couple of freelance projects. I also haven't been commuting as much these days, and I tend to do a lot of reading on the bus. This means that it's halfway through the month and I've only read one book - Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which seems to be nominated for/winning awards in every possible genre. I liked it more intellectually than I loved it, if that makes sense, but then at heart it's a police procedural, and those simply don't thrill me.

Meanwhile, I gave up on Midnight's Children. I feel ashamed to ditch the Booker of Booker of Bookers or whatever it is, but I slogged halfway in and I just couldn't face getting out the hard way.

Sir Salman

jwordsmith — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 02:38:14 +0000

I never thought much of Salman Rushdie as a celebrity and I don't know much about his writing, given that I'm only part-way into his latest book and haven't read any of his stuff before....

[pauses for breath]

BUT

I've been listening to a talk he gave at the Free Library of Philadelphia recently and it's like a masterclass in fiction writing.

He's is surprisingly unpretentious, self-deprecating, and generous with praise and advice. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in writing fiction.

Salman Rushdie at the Free Library (right click to save it to your hard-drive, unless you're on one of those new-fangled "MacIntosh" things in which case you'll have to work your own voodoo...)

It's not a 'how-to', but it is one of those experiences that makes you want to jump up and run to your notebook and write your own novel.

I love that.

Thanks, Sir Salman!

My beautiful London

asianwindow — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:11:01 +0000

His films and novels are filled with raucous sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. This Spring, the 53-year-old Hanif Kureishi received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace. Not bad going for a London suburban lad, writes Rachel Donadio in the New York Times Magazine [via 3QuarksDaily]

One of the most revealing insights into Britain’s recent social history comes early in “My Son the Fanatic,” Hanif Kureishi’s tender and darkly prescient 1997 film. It’s morning in an unnamed city in northern England, and Parvez, a secular Pakistani immigrant taxi driver brilliantly portrayed by Om Puri, watches Farid, his increasingly devout college-age son, sell his electric guitar. “Where is that going?” Parvez asks Farid as the buyer drives off. “You used to love making a terrible noise with these instruments!” Farid, played by Akbar Kurtha, looks at his father with irritation. “You always said there were more important things than ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ ” he says impatiently in his thick northern English accent. “You couldn’t have been more right.”

This seemingly casual exchange cuts to the heart of almost everything that has animated Kureishi in nearly three decades as a playwright, screenwriter, novelist and essayist. This is, after all, the man who co-edited “The Faber Book of Pop” and whose films and novels — including “My Beautiful Laundrette” and “The Buddha of Suburbia” — are filled with raucous sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. But this is also the man who had the presence of mind to poke around in English mosques in the late ’80s and early ’90s, sensing that something might be stirring there, as indeed it was. Kureishi’s novel “The Black Album,” set in 1989 and named after a Prince album, explored the growing discontent, disenfranchisement and radicalism of some young British Muslims.

Call for compensation after shelving of Islam novel

5-Pillar Scribe — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 22:43:23 +0000

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/aug/12/islam - ...Jones's The Jewel of Medina was described as potentially more controversial than both Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses and the Danish newspaper cartoons of Muhammad. >>>>>

This dangerous publicity stunt only works for sheep; who will later be conditioned to act like wolves.

Anwar Ibrahim menipu untuk memperjuangkan Islam

cekka — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:48:50 +0000

Anwar Ibrahim.. semakin hari semakin menyampah. Bukan Pak Lah sahaja yang 'flip-flop', Anwar pun juga dah 'flip-flop'. Apabila bersama orang India dan Cina, Anwar lantang bersuara, dialah pejuang kesama-rataan bangsa dan agama. Apabila bersama orang Melayu, dialah pejuang agama dan Melayu.

Secara jujurnya, ambo banyak membaca berita Anwar dari Anwaribrahimdotcom.blogspot.com..

Blogger ini banyak memberi fakta-fakta kontra mengenai Anwar dengan fakta dan sumber yang boleh diterima secara logik dan ilmiah. Ketepikan sikap prejudisnya kepada Anwar, tetapi bacalah dengan mata hati anda sendiri.

Salah satu artikel yang membuatkan ambo sesak nafas ialah artikel Anwar menyokong Salman Rushdie, yang menghina Al-Quran. Terlintas difikiran ambo ini.. Anwar ini gila populariti sangatkah? Sanggup meludah Islam asalkan popular di kacamata Barat.

Anda boleh baca artikel AIDC -disini- ataupun anda boleh baca terus...

Kenapa Anwar Ibrahim Sokong Salman Rushdie?

: imej dari anwaribrahimdotcom.blogspot.com

1. Menurut buku yg ditulis oleh Allahyarham Ikhwan Nasir, beliau kata Anwar pernah menentang keputusan Ayatollah Khomenei yang menjatuhkan hukuman bunuh terhadap penulis buku Satanic Versus iaitu Salman Rusdie

Sikap Anwar tidaklah patut kerana dia seorang Islam. Kata Anwar di dalam majalah ASIAWEEK dalam temubual dengan wartawan Roger Mitton dan tersiar pada 11 November 1993, Anwar berkata:

"Saya telah membaca The Satanic Verses. Bagi saya, beliau adalah seorang karyawan yang amat mendalam pengetahuannya. Saya tidak bersetuju dengan Khomenei mengenai The Satanic Verses. Tetapi ia perlu diberikan penelitian berikut. Pertama, penulisan buku ini merupakan hasil sastera. Kedua, bagi saya apa2 hukuman ke atas seorang pesalah perlulah diputuskan oleh sebuah mahkamah undang2..keputusan seumpama ini amat sukar kerana sekiranya TIDAK ADA KEBEBASAN BERFIKIR, orang ramai akan merasa terugut bilamana mereka menyentuh hal-hal yang dianggap sensitif".

Apa bezanya kes Salman Rusdie dengan ahli parlimen Denmark yang menerbitkan video FITNA, tapi kenapa anwar sokong Salman Rusdie tu?

2. Dr Haron Din pernah berkata di dalam majalah MASSA terbitan utusan Melayu (M) Bhd yang mengatakan DNA dan Forensik boleh digunakan untuk kes-kes JENAYAH SYARIAH. Ini amat membantu bagi merungkai masalah pertembungan antara mufti Perlis dan mufti Perak yang berkeras meminta 4 saksi tuduhan Saiful Bahari terhadap tuduhan liwat oleh Anwar.

Haron Din kata BOLEH digunakan kaedah forensik. Jadi, mengapa pula pak-pak mufti bertelagah dalam hal ini. Saya tidak ingat bulan bila diterbitkan, tapi cuba cari MASSA terbitan 1997 atau 1998, tapi yg pasti sebelum kes anwar terbongkar pd 98. gambar Haron Din tertera dimuka depan majalah.

3.Berkaitan akuan berkanun Dato Murad (Bekas Penolong Bank Negara) pada 1998 yg mengatakan Anwar ada meyumbang sebanyak USD100juta kpd bekas agen CIA yang waktu itu bertugas sebagai presiden Yayasan Kepimpinan (saya tak ingat nama penuh).

Sumbangan Anwar kpd yayasan tersebut menunjukkan dia ada hubungkait dgn CIA, tapi Anwar nafikan ia myumbang wang kpd yayasan tsebut. Wlaubgmnapun, beberapa hari kemudian presiden yayasan MENGAKU menerima wang sumbangan Anwar, cuma dia TIDAK BERSETUJU dengan jumlah yg dinyatakan dlm akuan bkanun Dato Murad. Katanya, "jumlah yang saya terima adalah kurang dari yang disebut".

Maknanya, presiden mgesahkan dia ADA TERIMA WANG. tak kisahlah jumlah tepat atau tidak, tapi yg penting MEMANG SAH anwar bg duit. Perkara ini dinyatakan dalam ruangan kecil dalam akhbar (tak ingat utusan atau berita harian). tapi jelas dalam tempoh 3 minggu selepas akuan berkanun Dato Murad keluar dalam berita.

Apakah intipati The Satanic Verses?

Salah seorang blogger telah memberi komen kepada artikel AIDC ini, dan menyatakan inti-pati kandungan The Satanic Verses, antaranya..

(1). Wahyu yang diturunkan kepada Rasulullah adalah dihantar oleh Syaitan dan seterusnya, Rasulullah tertipu dengan wahyu tersebut. Kemudian, Rasulullah menyampaikan wahyu tersebut sebagai ayat atau surah dalam Al-Quran2.

(2). Pusat Pelacuran di Kota Mekah diuruskan oleh kesemua isteri Rasulullah

(3). Salahuddin Al-Ayubi, Panglima Perang Islam dalam Perang Salib dikatakan sebagai syaitan.

Apakah Anwar sedar apa yang diperkatakan kepada Newsweek? Telahan ambo cuma satu.. Anwar sanggup menyokong Salman dan melekehkan Islam kerana mahu popular kepada media Barat.

(Ya Allah.. sekiranya benar Anwar berkata demikian, Engkau laknatilah orang ini yang menghina Kalam-Mu dan janganlah Engkau angkatkannya sebagai pemimpin kami. Amin..)

Anwar dan Gila Kuasanya

Mufti Kerajaan Negeri Perlis, Dr Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin, menjelaskan di dalam artikelnya tentang larangan Islam terhadap kegilaan kita kepada kuasa.

Kegilaan kuasa adalah lambang kedangkalan tentang hakikat kehidupan dunia dan akhirat. Mungkin jika perkara ini disebut kepada orang politik mereka kata “itu cakap yang tidak canggih dalam politik”.

Politik yang sepatutnya merupakan usaha menggabungkan tenaga untuk memikir kebaikan umat dan merancang masa depan yang lebih diredai untuk masyarakat dan negara telah bertukar menjadi medan ‘londeh-melondeh’ antara satu sama lain. Caci-maki, kata-nista, tuduh-menuduh telah menghiasi corak politik warisan penjajah ini. Penyakit ini dihidapi termasuklah yang menggunakan nama Islam dalam berpolitik. Akhirnya, kerana kuasa, banyak prinsip dan nas yang sudah dilupakan.

Namun mereka lupa, sistem politik perebutan kuasa warisan demokrasi penjajah yang meninggalkan keharmonian sistem Syura dalam Islam itulah yang telah membawa politik kita ke kancah permainan wang, permusuhan, pragmatisme yang melupai prinsip dan segala keburukan yang lain.

Sabda Nabi SAW: Kamu semua begitu bercita-cita terhadap jawatan kepimpinan, ia akan menjadi penyesalan pada hari kiamat. Ia sesuatu yang nikmat pada permulaannya tapi keburukan pada akhirnya” (Riwayat al-Bukhari).

Dalam Islam, tanggungjawab kita membaiki keadaan politik, bukan menggilai kuasa politik jatuh ke tangan sendiri. Apabila kuasa itu menjadi kegilaan, maka kawan akan tikam kawan, sahabat akan bunuh sahabat, yang berpakat akan berpecah, yang berbeza prinsip dan dasar akan berpakat, yang tidur sebantal akan mimpi berbeza, bahkan mungkin membunuh kongsi dalam mimpinya. Itulah politik yang meminggirkan wahyu.

Antara lainnya, Dr Mohd Asri memberi panduan dan penerangan kepada kita untuk membuat pendirian dizaman yang penuh kekeliruan dan pancaroba ini.

Beliau juga mengingatkan kita agar berhati-hati dengan peranan media Barat yang 'menaja' berita-berita tentang Islam.

Pensyarah ambo di UiTM dulu pernah berkata..

"Ada seorang kawan yang tidak pernah menipu kamu walau dalam apa keadaan sekalipun, samada kamu senang atau susah, samada kamu celik atau buta.. Ianya adalah hati kamu sendiri" Dengan kata lain, hati kita boleh membantu kita membuat keputusan yang tepat dan wajar.

Anda boleh membaca artikel penuh Dr Mohd Asri, dengan artikel "Ya Allah, Kami Rindukan Politik Di Bawah Naungan Wahyu-Mu" - disini -

Ex-CIA Analyst Ignores Islam in Muddled Mideast Strategy: Books

5-Pillar Scribe — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:35:28 +0000

Aug. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Whoever wins the U.S. presidential election this November will require a rethink on the Middle East. Kenneth M. Pollack, a former National Security Council staffer and CIA analyst, claims to provide one in ``A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East.'' >>>>>

Wanna sell a book and work towards discrediting an ideology; just look for a niche angle that no one has addressed. Non-Muslims would buy the book, and believe that Islam has absolutely no value - "if we just get those darned Muslims employed; they'd give up their religion and join our fold - and hey, since they're joining, we may as well lead 'em."

character

salamandrine — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:29:23 +0000

The gap between what is private and what is public has diminished to the point at which one can almost say that it has ceased to exist.
Is much of the world childhood itself has been abolished, childhood defined as safe, protected period during which a human can grow, learn, develop, play and become—in which a human being can be childlike, childish, and be spared the rigours of adulthood. These days global poverty forces children to work in factories and in fields. It turns children into street urchins, criminals and whores. Meanwhile, political instability not only claims children's lives in large numbers—in Sudan, in Rwanda, in India, in Iraq—but turns them into killers, too. See on TV the child soldiers of Africa toting their automatic weapons and speaking with terrifying ease about death. At a time when the external pressures upon us are so great, in Palestine, in Israel, in Afghanistan, in Iran, many artists have felt obliged to take into account the terrible truth that for a great majority of the world's population, their characters, strong or weak, have very little chance of determining their fates. Poverty is destiny, war is destiny, ancient ethnic, tribal and religious hatreds are destiny, a bomb on a bus or in a market square is destiny, and character just has to take its place on the list. A billionaire financial speculator attacks your country currency, and it collapses, and you lose your job; it doesn't matter who you are or how good a worker you were, you're on the street. Not is this simply a Third World problem. On September 11, 2001, thousands of people died for reasons unconnected with their characters. On that sad day, their ethos (they way of being in the world) was not their daimon (the guiding principle that shapes their lives).

Salman Rushdie, Heraclitus
Granta nº 100

Shame, by Salman Rushdie

Ank — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:50:32 +0000

Fiction and non-fiction are two assumed faces of literary coin. But we're talking about Rushdie, sir. His personal affairs with Padmalakshmi and Riya Sen(oh really? yes.) and his four marriages notwithstanding, he manages to blur the two-sided-coin into one, as if it is tossed up towards the heavens, never to return. He blends and mixes forbidden worlds, uses unthinkable language, and creates smoke... smoke that blurs reality with modern-day fairytale business shamelessly. And for me, prose and poetry too.

Hitherto bolted doors to far flung(or imagined) places in Pakistan are thrown open in Shame, which travels across realms of time and distance, punctuated by impossible characters but happenings which stink of reality. The lines just flow, fastforwarded all the time, as soon as the three mothers Chunni, Munni and Bunny give scandalous birth to fat, filthy Omar Khayyam Shakil in the Saawariya-esque haveli cum fortress called 'Nishapur'. To think that one would choose protagonists even before they appear in your story, and then do a flip-flop to completely sidetrack them and write about two families which are as fictious as they're real is insanity uninhibited, but Bookerite Rushdie actually writes such a story. Hyders and Harappas. Gen Zia Ul Haq and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

The book, my first Rushdie, for me, is beyond ink on paper. It outshines my ability of sorting its good and bad points, dazzles me and baffles the book geek in me. In the middle of the book, Sufia Zinobia Hyder develops a mysical habit of blushing and going steaming, red hot whenever she senses shame or love near her. I mean, isn't that heights(of imagination, irrelevance, somato-nervous coordination etc)? It becomes infinitely hard and pointless, all the same, for me to say if such a book was entertaining. Let's just say it was extremely interesting.

And interesting were the names, conjuring foggy and unyeilding atmosphere for whatever has been made of story in this book : Chunni, Munni, Bunny. Omar Khayyam Shakil(hero). Babar Shakil. Sufiya Zinobia aka Shame(herione). Good News Hyder. Bariamma. Raza and Bilquis Hyder. Iskandar Harappa. Rani Humayun(later Harappa). Arjumand Harappa(you may read Benazir Bhutto). Little Mir Harappa. Haroun Harappa.

Touched a raw nerve, a developing nerve....