Pope Con

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Am glad to see that am not the only one who escaped the Pope's Con/Scorn the other day. WinstonChurchill once said "Men occasionally stumble on the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened". Are we rushing off from the Truth? This post is a reflection of that and is by Uri Avnery, taken from http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/35750

The Pope's Evil Legend - Mohammed's Sword
By URI AVNERY

Since the days when Roman Emperors threw Christians to the lions, the relations between the emperors and the heads of the church have undergone many changes.

Constantine the Great, who became Emperor in the year 306--exactly 1700 years ago--encouraged the practice of Christianity in the empire, which included Palestine. Centuries later, the church split into an Eastern (Orthodox) and a Western (Catholic) part. In the West, the Bishop of Rome, who acquired the title of Pope, demanded that the Emperor accept his superiority.

The struggle between the Emperors and the Popes played a central role in European history and divided the peoples. It knew ups and downs. Some Emperors dismissed or expelled a Pope, some Popes dismissed or excommunicated an Emperor. One of the Emperors, Henry IV, "walked to Canossa", standing for three days barefoot in the snow in front of the Pope's castle, until the Pope deigned to annul his excommunication.

But there were times when Emperors and Popes lived in peace with each other. We are witnessing such a period today. Between the present Pope, Benedict XVI, and the present Emperor, George Bush II, there exists a wonderful harmony. Last week's speech by the Pope, which aroused a world-wide storm, went well with Bush's crusade against "Islamofascism", in the context of the "Clash of Civilizations".

* * *

IN HIS lecture at a German university, the 265th Pope described what he sees as a huge difference between Christianity and Islam: while Christianity is based on reason, Islam denies it. While Christians see the logic of God's actions, Muslims deny that there is any such logic in the actions of Allah.

As a Jewish atheist, I do not intend to enter the fray of this debate. It is much beyond my humble abilities to understand the logic of the Pope. But I cannot overlook one passage, which concerns me too, as an Israeli living near the fault-line of this "war of civilizations".

In order to prove the lack of reason in Islam, the Pope asserts that the prophet Muhammad ordered his followers to spread their religion by the sword. According to the Pope, that is unreasonable, because faith is born of the soul, not of the body. How can the sword influence the soul?

To support his case, the Pope quoted--of all people--a Byzantine Emperor, who belonged, of course, to the competing Eastern Church. At the end of the 14th century, the Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus told of a debate he had--or so he said (its occurrence is in doubt)--with an unnamed Persian Muslim scholar. In the heat of the argument, the Emperor (according to himself) flung the following words at his adversary:

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".

These words give rise to three questions:

(a) Why did the Emperor say them?
(b) Are they true?
(c) Why did the present Pope quote them?

* * *

WHEN MANUEL II wrote his treatise, he was the head of a dying empire. He assumed power in 1391, when only a few provinces of the once illustrious empire remained. These, too, were already under Turkish threat.

At that point in time, the Ottoman Turks had reached the banks of the Danube. They had conquered Bulgaria and the north of Greece, and had twice defeated relieving armies sent by Europe to save the Eastern Empire. In 1453, only a few years after Manuel's death, his capital, Constantinople (the present Istanbul) fell to the Turks, putting an end to the Empire that had lasted for more than a thousand years.

During his reign, Manuel made the rounds of the capitals of Europe in an attempt to drum up support. He promised to reunite the church. There is no doubt that he wrote his religious treatise in order to incite the Christian countries against the Turks and convince them to start a new crusade. The aim was practical, theology was serving politics.

In this sense, the quote serves exactly the requirements of the present Emperor, George Bush II. He, too, wants to unite the Christian world against the mainly Muslim "Axis of Evil". Moreover, the Turks are again knocking on the doors of Europe, this time peacefully. It is well known that the Pope supports the forces that object to the entry of Turkey into the European Union.

* * *

IS THERE any truth in Manuel's argument?

The pope himself threw in a word of caution. As a serious and renowned theologian, he could not afford to falsify written texts. Therefore, he admitted that the Qur'an specifically forbade the spreading of the faith by force. He quoted the second Sura, verse 256 (strangely fallible, for a pope, he meant verse 257) which says: "There must be no coercion in matters of faith".

How can one ignore such an unequivocal statement? The Pope simply argues that this commandment was laid down by the prophet when he was at the beginning of his career, still weak and powerless, but that later on he ordered the use of the sword in the service of the faith.

Such an order does not exist in the Qur'an. True, Muhammad called for the use of the sword in his war against opposing tribes--Christian, Jewish and others--in Arabia, when he was building his state. But that was a political act, not a religious one; basically a fight for territory, not for the spreading of the faith.

Jesus said: "You will recognize them by their fruits." The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: How did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the power to "spread the faith by the sword"?

Well, they just did not.

For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece. Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian.
True, the Albanians did convert to Islam, and so did the Bosniaks. But nobody argues that they did this under duress. They adopted Islam in order to become favorites of the government and enjoy the fruits.

In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants

indiscriminately, in the name of the gentle Jesus. At that time, 400 years into the occupation of Palestine by the Muslims, Christians were still the majority in the country. Throughout this long period, no effort was made to impose Islam on them. Only after the expulsion of the Crusaders from the country, did the majority of the inhabitants start to adopt the Arabic language and the Muslim faith--and they were the forefathers of most of today's Palestinians.

* * *

THERE IS no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. Poets like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the great Maimonides. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age. How would this have been

possible, had the Prophet decreed the "spreading of the faith by the sword"?

What happened afterwards is even more telling. When the Catholics re-conquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. And where did the hundreds of thousand of Jews, who refused to abandon their faith, escape? Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries. The Sephardi ("Spanish") Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman Empire) in the north to Sudan in the south. Nowhere were they persecuted. They knew nothing like the tortures of the Inquisition, the flames of the auto-da-fe, the pogroms, the terrible mass-expulsions that took place in almost all Christian countries, up to the Holocaust.

WHY? Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of the "peoples of the book". In Islamic society, a special place was reserved for Jews and Christians. They did not enjoy completely equal rights, but almost. They had to pay a special poll-tax, but were exempted from military service--a trade-off that was quite welcome to many Jews. It has been said that Muslim rulers frowned upon any attempt to convert Jews to Islam even by gentle persuasion--because it entailed the loss of taxes.

Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for fifty generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times "by the sword" to get them to abandon their faith.

* * *

THE STORY about "spreading the faith by the sword" is an evil legend, one of the myths that grew up in Europe during the great wars against the Muslims--the reconquista of Spain by the Christians, the Crusades and the repulsion of the Turks, who almost conquered Vienna. I suspect that the German Pope, too, honestly believes in these fables. That means that the leader of the Catholic world, who is a Christian theologian in his own right, did not make the effort to study the history of other religions.

Why did he utter these words in public? And why now?

There is no escape from viewing them against the background of the new Crusade of Bush and his evangelist supporters, with his slogans of "Islamofascism" and the "Global War on Terrorism"--when "terrorism" has become a synonym for Muslims. For Bush's handlers, this is a cynical attempt to justify the domination of the world's oil resources. Not for the first time in history, a religious robe is spread to cover the nakedness of economic interests; not for the first time, a robbers' expedition becomes a Crusade.

The speech of the Pope blends into this effort. Who can foretell the dire consequences?

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is one of the writers featured in

The Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

Of Vantage & Vintage

So, i doubt i'll ever be able to pin up photos of my Grahamstown excursion or the WAPI 4 event images coz too much i happening and i find myself popping from one thing to the next - i guess that is the jinx of my life. I intend to still put 'em up, sometime, preferably in the near, near future lakini before i do, here's some snaps of this year's Concours d'Elegance, which was jana. Not to mention, lovely and reminiscent of those swimming galas we used to have in primo and high skul, jamaz come flossin' and alot to see.

The thing about this show is that you certainly (and almost shockingly) realise the disparity between the haves and the have-nots. The advantaged and the regular sukuma-wiki fellas like myself. Most of the crowd here is undoubtedly wanna-be's, but those few who ARE definitely HAVE. To begin with you have X5's and Benz's running the length of the parking lot, while you have come walking. And these are not the cars on display. The one's on display are a 1966 Ford Mustang, a 1951 Rolls Royce, some Alfa Romeos clocking 30+ years, Austin Martin from the days our folks were rockin' and rollin', a 1960 VW Karmann Ghia and the list goes on and on.

These babies have been pampered, pimped, spruced up and diligently maintained, some to over-clinical levels. The Ford Mustang (the only one at this show) had its silver-coated engine sparkling clean, it could easily compete with any bling bling out there.

The thing that took away my admiration though was the 1925 DKW motorcycle from Sati's Classic which had been restored from a scrappy-looking basic skeleton junk to this golden-brown super-glossy-must-have bike. I tell you, the things you can do with money. CREAM is nice, no doubt.

dci : lessons learnt 2

Okey folks, the last of the lessons learnt. am not sure how these can be clearly articulated into helping the kawa blogger (ubaya ya kuwa spoonfed with this 8-4-4 system), but personally i reckon i can apply the thoughts, ideas and associations learnt from the dci on many different things i do.


Case in point - When someone at the conference said that in Africa we have failed to manage our diversity (the repercussions in form of Rwanda genocide, SA apartheid + the fact that all these East Asian countries like Malaysia, Indonesia etc were at the same par with us economically while we gained independence and somehow did a GebreSelassie on us) i pictured how my blog can be a mouthpiece to celebrate the uniqueness of our people within their diversity. I pictured how different bloggers could come up with their own respective (and respectable) insights and share them with others for the betterment of themselves. I pictured how i could apply these lessons to my blog, my block, my community, my life. Like the butterfly effect, i wishfully think it'll have bigger and better effects if we first own the everyday struggle.

• Al-Jazeera got props for highlighting "a balanced and unbiased" coverage of middle eastern events - it was applauded as a different view from all the "regular programming" that we are used to from reuters, cnn, sky etc.
• I was shocked to find out that Ghana has 136 radio stations (12 state-owned, population: 22m) while here am still struggling to chezea this dial ishike Capital and not Kameme! Liberalization means more info reach more people. The trick again is to manage the diversity and not turn each station to be a tribal instigator. Just my thoughts.......
• For bloggers, it means that podcasting has the potential to convert each blog to a radio station????
• Also, i found out that when you try to tweng in Ghana, you're called a LAFA (local african, foreign accent!). Now that's a nice deterrent for those of us huku sides of Pumwani kujaribu kuongea ni kama we're from Atlanta.
• Blogs and online media can be used to enhance participation in vertical dialogues. This is the same point as enabling info to flow bottom-up instead of the traditional top-down.
• In KE for example, micro-activism on parts of our blogs can (and i believe will) make a difference in how things are run. Getting there means involving ourselves with great initiatives such as mzalendo.com, creating strong linkages that are no push-overs, then demanding for the changes we seek. Check out theyworkforyou.com
• That although we may be safe thinking "phewx, the dci didn't come up with the dreaded code of conduct for the african blogosphere..." there are concerted efforts by the likes of the Internet Governance Forum to "regulate" - yes expand that idea, the internet. Also, i remember reading somewhere that the US has a scheme to dominate information warfare.
• If you want to do biashara on the net, start with the end in mind. What are your best opportunities to realise your vision? To minimise costs, use free tools such as Blogger, Wordpress, engage forums and comment functions. Whiteafrican covers some of them.
• "Everybody owns a Heidelberg now" (Peter Verweij), with personal blogs. I think the question to be asked is "What are you going to print on yours?"

Links: - Disclaimer, am not advertising any of these firms/people in any way. Use it for your Goodies/Knowledge/Truthseeking: - www.mms-blogs.com, www.24.com, www.dailykos.com, www.sethzodin.typepad.com, www.michelfortin.com, www.markshuttleworth.com, www.netucation.co.za, www.timbuktuchronicles.com (i must say, here you'll find a wealth of info), www.worldchanging.com, www.africaunchained.com, www.newzbubble.com, www.moneyweb.com, https://www.google.com/adsense (if you wanna make some cheddar from your blog).

And, i arrest my case. That was what i learnt from the dci, i made quite a number of contacts (which few shall remain nameless), and i sincerely hope that others can benefit from the summit albeit via proxy. The lessons learnt, both previous posted and this one are available as a PDF for further circulation and am printing it to distribute locally. If you're interested, holla at me and i shall email it to you.

dci : lessons learnt 1

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DCI : Enter Judas

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Black-loving Gtown is tranquil. As tranquil as Nairobi could ever dream of getting. The fresh unfettered misty air pangs you like a native of Chenobil. this is one place where you can feel the ease of life in the midst of birds singing. And at nite, the local swimming pool hosts a charged game of waterpolo, shouts and whistles filling the moon-lit horizon from my room.

The whistles, shouts and clamour instantly remind me of why am here - or more, of why some people have issues with me being here. You see, the way i view it is pretty simplistic.

I applied for the DCI like everyone else, got the scholarship and am here to learn. Moreover, am pressed to think that someone already concluded that we are not representative enuff. Concluded about my intentions or lack thereof to sambaza the knowledge i've acquired from here to benefit others besides myself. But nooooo, that doesn't seem to be a good enuff script for the self-acclaimed Real African Blogger.

Pause.

Ponder for a minute.

Laugh.

The laughter could be out of disrespect but it ain't. I mean, this is just too trivial to have caused this much vitroil. Lakini kwajili alianaza, lazima nijibu.

Let's keep it simple and stupid, shall we? Am not going to qualify what passes as a blog, who passes as an African, a blogger or an African blogger for that matter. You're who you think you are. Jijazie.

Did i gain from this conference? Yes, beyond my expectations. And since am not anywhere playing fiddle to someone's request to wait for the speeches to ".....savage or praise them with due consideration", i will run it personally the same way i envisaged and resort to blog each lesson learnt as way of EMPOWERING and DEVELOPING others skills. Maybe someone else can benefit from these "30 pieces of silver".

But it's got me thinking, so what exactly is the script that the Real African Blogger needs us to play? My questions pop this way, na natumai ntapata majibu za kiutu uzima.

If we all applied at the same time, same place, doesnt that account for a transparent and fair process?

If AB&H received the scholarship, angeikataa on the basis that the panel was predominantly white? Leo hii tukiwa na kiburi kwa walio na elimu/ujuzi kutushinda, tunaenda wapi on the pretext of colour tunaenda wapi?

What is racist if not the above?

If Kipketer is Danish what stops a ........ oh, wait. Let me rephrase. Doesn't a white person born in Africa qualify to be African? Egyptians are super-light in hue, are they Africans? Do you have to be a coal-coloured miro to own that term?

Kwa nini kubomoa badala ya kujijenga hata kama ni kupata mafunzo kwa waliotutangulia kwa elimu kama kublogu?

Kama waweza kufanya zaidi ya waliochukua mkono wa mbele, then do it! Mimi najitolea kujilipia all expenses na nimbebee bag ya 30 pieces of silver kwa kunialika!I came out of Gtown a betta blogger and a BETTA EQUIPPED AFRICAN regardless of who convened the conference. Which part of this sentence doesn't make sense?

As was my intention, I'll redistribute the lessons tenfold. Shouldn't we be concentrating on teaching each other new skills and not kupepeta moto za upuzi? Hii ndio sababu kubwa namheshimu Ndesanjo kwa kuwa anapatiana changa moto na mafunzo muhimu tunazohitaji wakati wa sasa kama Waafrika - weusi au weupe.If am invited or get a scholarship to Gtown again or anywhere else for the intention of advancing my skills, whether its China, Molo, Moshi or Timbuktu, i'll take it. And that's free. What if they add 30 pieces of silver juu yake?

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image: http://goldprice.org/buy-silver/uploaded_images/junk-silver-coins-797355.JPG

Heat and Cold at DCI

Damn it's cold! That's all i can think inside the lecture hall at the Digital Citizen Indaba. Am in GTown in the East Cape of South Africa and the weather here takes a backseat to the hot digital citizenry issues that are under discussion today. Bloggers, mobloggers, vbloggers, hactivists are all gathered to brainstorm on the new "journalism" sunami that is raging upon us all. I liked one speaker's comment -

"Whatever threatens journalism is journalism in itself"

911 : An Afterthought

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I can’t help being a skeptic. I was brought up to question things, chew my food and not just swallow whole. And after seeing so much drama - orchestrated drama on this planet, am left questioning all the minute spaces there may be in “sincerity”. Am actively suffocating any pockets of gullibility left in me coz hey, only dead omena swim along with the current. My mind’s constantly on a roll of questions. What is truth? What is real? Do they matter? If they do, why? And to whom?

Not to sound like a shrink or someone in dire need of one, I don’t contend with issues without trying to understand the facts and build-up behind them. Finite eyes can only visualize finite things and despite this limitation we are still able to dig up the truths about event's pasts and the meaning behind things. More powerful however is an open mind, for it comprehends grander stuff than what meets the eye. It’s the sapien sapiens in all of us that questions, searches, researches, dismantles and constructs meanings.

So am glued in front of this gigantic silver screen watching events of the doomed United Flight 93 Hollywoodly unfold before my finite eyes. Before I came here I had almost 93 reasons why I didn’t feel like watching this flick – from the fact that it’ll be a fiction totally incompatible with the reality that bore it, to the obvious innuendos that will be littered in its scripts to the detriment of some quarters, namely Islam, Arabs etc. But still I always loved a good show; and it’s amazing how much you can see when you want to see. The vice versa is equally true.

So after a sizeable amount of the aforementioned, the movie ends as spectacularly as how real life would if you plummeted over 30,000 feet to the ground. It’s another incredible fiction from the media arm of Propaganda United and from that merit it’s nice to watch if you’re into CG and Visual FX – extraordinary stuff in there. However, I found out that if you’re realistically inclined, the end proves to be the beginning of a stream of mental questions.

Tuanze.

Isn’t it incredible how an entire Boeing 757 – in Kenyan terms, the size of a length stretch of 15 or so Kibera mabati shanties, virtually did a kiini macho stunt right before the fields of Shanksville? To this date, there’s no actual footage of the entire wreckage of this humongous aircraft apart from mabati kidogo kidogo here and there. All these while, the victims’ bodies were being recovered, while the whole plane varnished!! Salaala!

Isn’t it incredible how those America-hating-kamikaze-bedouins managed to pull off such an exploit in the first instance? Picture 19 very-Middle-Eastern-looking jamaz passing undetected with their box-cutters in the jaws of the tightest aviation security, manage to hijack these planes using the same box-cutters (plus bomb hoaxes), still manage to reach the secure cockpits (some manned by ex-military pilots), still manage to effectively take control the planes, still manage to fly them for …… I don’t recall how long but long enuff to hit something as precise as oh, I don’t know, the Pentagon? Here’s the icing, apparently this happened after circling four to five times above the five-sided intelligence headquarters…. aaahm unnoticed and causing no suspicion at all. Climax!

Isn’t it incredible that before The Matrix Trilogy ever came out from Hollywood, here were some real people pulling real-life stunts like these? I mean, its no feat - no photograph of any hijackers boarding the flights, no tickets bought for the flights either yet they still managed to get in. Won’t I love to know how to do that, I can go to all the dream destinations I’ve wanted to. No distress signals sent out of the planes… I mean, what were the pilots/copilots thinking? You have suicidal kurutus banging on the cockpit door (trying to fervently get in using box-cutters) and still you do nothing to alert the authorities of this impending hijack? Lo! Kumekujwo!

Isn’t it incredible that they managed to replicate this drama not once, not twice, not thrice but five times that one single 11th day of September without a whiff from the most articulate intelligence outfits known to present man? I mean, really, don’t you just admire these !@$@#% super-efficient Islamists? At this point, they make Neo look very amateurish! Enda cheza na watoto wadogo!

Isn’t it incredible that 5 years down the line, just about the entire (ok, am hyperbolic) leading academia in the West believe the truth behind 911 was and is still hidden from the public. If you’re skeptical like me, this is a great read to unravel some of those reservations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_Truth_Movement, heck, I think this should even be taught in kindergartens! Exactly where we were (reading a book upside down) when it was all unfolding. See how calm we was? You think we knew about the whole mission? Kumbaf!

Then when kids get to K2, we can teach them abit of good old-fashioned truth.

Am trying hard to escape to Zion from this collective unconsciousness of media-driven simulations. Is it simulated? Is it real? What is real? What is truth? Do they matter? If they do, why? And to whom?

Ahhhhhhh, too many questions, why don’t we just believe what we are told! Or read. Or see.

Complexities I

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It felt like a dream, sweet vanilla ice cream. I got intoxicated by the romantic steam, floating downstream, then we hit the rocks and I didn’t want it no more. I didn’t want to fall in love again because I had learnt that not just rocks break, hearts do too. One mistake is enough to make you leap over the waterfalls so I closed up, wasn’t ready for any plunges yet. Then someone came into my life that I had not planned for. She had no pre-conceptions, no pretensions. It was like the perfect beginning. Or the start of a new beginning. Nothing could come between this thing we were starting. It was meant to be, destiny if you will. One morning I awoke with the sun’s rising on the East and she was at the West. Strange what can happen while you’re having your kawaida forty winks.

How did this happen? How could life go on? If this wasn’t it, what was? I could have packed my bags to join her, yet I didn’t. There was something amiss about my indifference but what was wrong with it I could not tell. The sun’s setting made all the black and whites a lot grayer. This day I had no faith we could survive the cold of the night. We needed more than just a dream to hang onto. Everyone thought it would last but we casually let it slip. We both had too much pride inside, we needed to fly into the open blue and dance among the stars. The sky was calling and I thought if us together was not its limit then ecstasy awaited us somewhere else.

More chaotic days followed, stuck in the dark of what my life had become, stuck in the middle of my life and my dream. I let go of that dream to stick to my life. It was inevitable. The Chinese said if you don’t change your direction, you’re bound to end up where you’re going. So I moved on, stayed true to myself, my ideals, and my reality. I recalled the conversations that I used to have, learning from the old man at the base of the Great Tsavo Baobab tree. I remember him saying, “Son, you can build dreams. Construct them as you would a cowshed. Carve them as you would a mwiko, mold them and even change them”. Each of these lessons was given with a distant look into the outstretching plain giving it the credence of age-molded wisdom. He went on, “Just as long as you don’t lose the essence of your being. I know you don’t know this lesson and you look like you don’t want to learn it, but, in life you have to be willing to learn though you may not be willing to be taught”. With that he took a sip from his calabash and left me to wander in my mental abyss, processing the depth of his words.

I reflected and pondered, pondered and reflected. When I stood up from the ground and began treading, I could feel the ease at which I carried my burdens. I trod on. Same direction. New zeal.