Ever heard of “powernoia” or “nomophobia”? Well you’ve probably suffered from both.
July 19th, 2015 by Roger Darlington
You’ll find this explanation in this short article by Eva Wiseman who admits to her dependence on her mobile phone. I understand her feelings: these days, if my iPhone 6 is not charged and nearby, not only do I not have connectivity, but my Apple Watch will only really tell the time and remind me to stand up after one hour of sitting.
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How many other planets have we discovered – and does any other planet support intelligent life?
July 18th, 2015 by Roger Darlington
This week, we saw fantastic pictures of Pluto which we used to call a planet and now call a dwarf planet. Whatever we call it, Pluto is on the very edge of our solar system – but we’ve been able to detect other planets in other solar systems.
I’m currently reading “The Magic Of Reality”, a science book by Richard Dawkins which was published in 2011. He writes of discoveries of other planets that “the present grand total is 519 planets orbiting stars in our galaxy other than the sun”.
But that was four years ago. As this report makes clear, NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has now located more than 1,000 planets bringing the total number of planets that we have discovered to around 2,000.
But there are something like 10,000 billion billion stars in the universe and about 10% of known stars are described by astronomers as ‘sun-like’, meaning that they are likely to have planets that might be able to sustain life.
So the odds are that intelligent life has evolved on other planets too. Dawkins writes: “I think there probably are [aliens]”.
So why haven’t we heard from them? There are two major complications: time and distance. The universe is around 13.8 billion years old – other life forms could well have been and gone by now. The universe is huge and expanding rapidly – the distances are so great that any communications from other beings could take millions and millions of years to reach us.
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My 19th short story: “A Lucky Escape”
July 17th, 2015 by Roger Darlington
Ever been crossing a road and almost been hit by a car? Ever thought how things could have turned out very different? This is the inspiration behind my short story “A Lucky Escape”. You can read it here.
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What kind of a country is Iran?
July 16th, 2015 by Roger Darlington
I am very pleased that a deal has been done on Iran’s nuclear programme. As I explained in this blog posting, more than eight years ago some observers were insisting that Iran’s nuclear programme had reached “a point of no return” and Israel was contemplating bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities. The assessment was wrong and, had Israel launched a military attack, this week’s deal would never have happened and instead we could well have had a war in the Middle East that would have made the current conflicts look like bar room brawls.
Iran is not a democracy and it still represses citizens at home and supports terrorism aboard. But many of its citizens want an accommodation with the West and an improvement in living standards, as my wife and I found when we made a fascinating visit to Iran. The country has a long and impressive history – as I have explained in these two book reviews – and hopefully its future will see it reintegrated into the international community to benefits of its people and the world.
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The challenge of Islamic extremism (4)
July 15th, 2015 by Roger Darlington
This weekend, I attended a one-day course entitled “Hope And History: A Short Introduction To Contemporary Issues In Muslim Contexts” run by a lecturer called Dr Farid Panjwani.
He explained that most post-colonial leaders of Muslim countries were modern and secular but were dictators and did not provide welfare systems or prosperous societies. In the absence of other outlets, the discontent of the people has been expressed in religious language via the mosque.
The grievances of Muslims are often very genuine and the diagnosis of extremists can be very astute but often the prescription is wrong. The message of the extremists is that Islam will solve your problems, not modernity or democracy.
He insisted that the definition of “extremism” is very subjective and variable and argued that the problem is not extremist views themselves but intolerance to the views of others.
At the end of his five hour course (there was break for lunch), Dr Farid Panjwani offered some ways forward:
- A honest understanding of the Muslim tradition and its wide and varied diversity
- The promotion of education in humanities, in particular philosophy and the arts
- A visible commitment to social justice by Western countries in its dealing with Muslim societies
- The creation of spaces for the peaceful articulation of critiques and grievances
Our lecturer did not offer us a reading list but recommended a couple of works of fiction including “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” [my review here] which has actually been made into a film [my review here].
I have read a number of interesting books about Islam including:
- “Islam” by Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair [my review here]
- “The Crisis Of Islam” by Bernard Lewis [my review here]
- “Why Do People Hate America?” by Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies [my review here]
- “Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil And Fundamentalism In Central Asia” by Ahmed Rashid [my review here]
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The challenge of Islamic extremism (3)
July 14th, 2015 by Roger Darlington
This weekend, I attended a one-day course entitled “Hope And History: A Short Introduction To Contemporary Issues In Muslim Contexts” run by a lecturer called Dr Farid Panjwani.
He was adamant that terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS should not be called “fundamentalist” because many Muslims hold fundamental beliefs but do not condone violence. Instead he insisted that we should call such groups “extremist”. He offered this definition: “Extremism is a product of a particular interpretation of Islamic religious texts which becomes attractive to people under specific social conditions.”
On the basis of this definition, he argued that support for extremist Islam required two conditions:
Condition 1: a pro-violence interpretation of religious texts. He acknowledged that, although many Muslims insist that Islam is religion of peace, there are parts of the Quran which can be interpreted as supporting murder. He instanced verse 5:32 which moderate Muslims interpret as condemning murder but extremist Muslims interpret as justifying murder because of a wide interpretation of the word “corruption”.
Condition 2: social conditions that make such interpretations attractive. He gave many examples of such conditions including:
- The development of Wahhabism in the 18th century and its support by forces in Saudi Arabia today (so-called “petrodollar Islam”)
- The use of religion by the USA and Pakistan against the communist USSR during the Afghan War in the 1980s (“Charlie’s War”)
- The western violation of Muslim countries starting with the use of Saudi Arabia by Western forces to expel Iraq from Kuwait and going on to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq
- The continuation of political wounds such as Palestine and Kashmir
- The failure of the promise of the nation state/modernity in Muslim contexts such as North Africa and the Gulf States
- The use of global communications technology including social media
- The proliferation of sophisticated weapons including automatic weapons
As Dr Panjwani put it: “All of us, at one time or another, have played a role”.
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The challenge of Islamic extremism (2)
July 13th, 2015 by Roger Darlington
This weekend, I attended a one-day course entitled “Hope And History: A Short Introduction To Contemporary Issues In Muslim Contexts” run by a lecturer called Dr Farid Panjwani.
A major theme of the course was the clash between the historical experience of Islam and the colonial take-over of Muslim societies:
- Christianity was not a state religion until the Roman Emperor Constantine adopted the religion in the early 4th century.
- However, in the Muslim context, religion and politics came together immediately with Mecca as a mini state ruled by Muhammed.
- During the period of Muslim empires, there were great cultural achievements which made these societies the most advanced in the world at the time.
- But the decline of the political power of Muslim societies in the face of European colonialism led to a decline in religious power.
- Colonialism meant not just that another empire was in control, but that a more advanced or modern empire was dominant.
- Among Muslim societies, there are difference responses to modernity and different attitudes to the West.
Dr Panjwani explained the major consequences of colonialism and modernity for Muslim societies:
- A displacement from political power with the fall of old, long-standing empires
- The marginalisation of the Islamic legal tradition governing largely personal matters (sharia law)
- A challenge to social structures with new occupations and new gender roles
- Social conditions such as the power of political elites and high levels of unemployment that nurture rage and a sense of injustice
He defined modernity as involving the following:
- A belief in science and the power to control nature
- The privatisation of religion leading to secularisation
- An economic system based on free markets and growth
- A theoretical emphasis on equality
- The notion of the nation state and the supra-state
- An emphasis on individuality
Dr Panjwani explained that a key question for most Muslims around the world is: “How does one remain true to one’s religion while living a successful modern life?
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The challenge of Islamic extremism (1)
July 12th, 2015 by Roger Darlington
As a believer in lifelong learning, I regularly attend short courses at a London further education college called the City Lit. This weekend, I attended a one-day course entitled “Hope And History: A Short Introduction To Contemporary Issues In Muslim Contexts”. Our tutor was Pakistani-born Dr Farid Panjwani, a lecturer at the Institute of Education, who was very informative and balanced and delivered his material with fluency and passion. He drew the title of his course from the last line of a poem by Seamus Heaney: “And hope and history rhyme”.
There were 17 of us on the course – two-thirds of them women. In the introductions, only one (a young woman) self-declared as a Muslim and she said nothing for the rest of the course. Most of the attendees expressed an interest in current affairs and many made it clear that they wanted to understand better the threat of Islamic terrorism. One (American) woman asked: “Why are Muslims killing one another?’ Another student admitted ” “I’m feeling fear and the beginning of prejudice”.
Dr Panjwani began the course with a quick look at the historic background:
- Prophet Muhammad 570-632 CE: Mecca to Medina
- First Four Caliphs (not related) 632-661 CE: the Golden Age
- The first dynasty: Ummayads (661-749 CE)
- The Abbasids (749-1258 CE)
- The Mongol invasion in 13th century
- The gunpowder empires: Mughals, Safavids, and Ottomans
Then he gave a few facts about contemporary Islam;
- About 22% or one in five of the world population is Muslim
- Of all Muslims, Sunnis are around 85% and Shias are 15% [for explanation of the difference, see here]
- In the UK, there are 2.7 million Muslims or 4.5% of the population
- The largest component of UK Muslims (40%) are of Pakistani origin
Dr Panjwani insisted that “There are huge cultural differences between Muslims” – a theme to which he constantly returned.
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Words of the day: perihelion and aphelion
July 11th, 2015 by Roger Darlington
These two words refer to two points in the orbit of the Earth around the Sun.
Although the orbit is close to being a circle (like the shape of a ball), it is not quite circular; it is instead an ellipse (like the shape of an egg).
The point at which the Earth is nearest to the sun is called the perihelion and the point at which the Earth is furthest from the Sun is known as the aphelion. The word ‘helion’ comes the name of the Greek sun god Helios, while ‘peri’ is Greek for near and ‘apo’ is Greek for far.
This information is in the book I am currently reading: “The Magic Of Reality” by Richard Dawkins.
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Commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain – and remembering the particular tale of Karel Kuttelwascher
July 10th, 2015 by Roger Darlington
Today is the 75th anniversary of the commencement of the Battle of Britain. It is estimated that between 10 July and the end of October 1940, the RAF lost around 1,023 aircraft whilst the Luftwaffe lost 1,887. The ultimate failure of the Luftwaffe was one of the turning points of the Second World War and prevented Germany from invading Britain.
Around 3,000 RAF pilots took part in the Battle – mostly in Hurricanes and Spitfires – and 544 of them were killed. Another 814 of them would be killed before the end of the war. Today we remember their bravery and sacrifice.
One of the RAF’s Hurricane pilots in the Battle was Vee’s father, the then 24 year old Czech Karel Kuttelwascher, known to his comrades as ‘Kut’. His part in this particular conflict was tiny but, later in the war, he shot down 18 German aircraft and won the Distinguished Flying Cross twice. You can read his story here.
Some 30 years ago, I wrote a biography about Kut entitled “Night Hawk”. Amazingly a publisher has recently been in touch with me with view to re-publishing the book, possibly in a new edition.
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