Random Reflexions

Once again the credulous masses of this country are proving how very gullible they really are. Nothing has changed in over the 30 years of the so-called development we've had. We've sunk ourselves up to our noses in credulous beliefs. If anything, helped by modern technology such as email, our credulity has stood the test of time and is as such strong and concretely rooted in superstition and lore as it has always been.

Apparently there is this email making the rounds claiming that the the planet Mars has changed direction of orbit and that on mars the sun is now rising from the west. The doomsday claim here is that the Prophet's hadith had predicted this would happen to earth. The fear factor for Internet zombies in Maldives is that they are now scared out of their pants because they've been caught off-faith (so to speak). Apparently one of the signs of the impending doom of the world is the sun rising from the west.

Apart from the simple and narrow view of the workings of the universe this entails these emails try to prey in on the gullible hordes of Internet zombies. The consequences of the sun simply rising from the west, only possible if earth changed orbit direction of axial rotation, would be far more devastating and shocking than anyone can imagine. Suffice to say that you'd be lucky to survive to tell the tale, let alone wait for the next sign of doomsday. Fear can do wonders, and it appears a little stupidity and lack of knowledge thrown in to doomsday claims is enough to trigger a rush to wear the scarf.

(On a more logical note: if the sun did rise from the west for us in Male', surely it would have stopped moving and reversed direction to those in Europe and parts of Africa. For them, the first sign of doom would be something completely different to the prediction from n Hadith!)

Anyway, I found out about this email from two sources. One was a friend of my sister who rang, quite alarmed and terrified, to report the doomsday prediction. The second one was more shocking:

I went to purchase a ticket from Singapore Airlines (Sunland) and serving me was a female friend of mine, who out of nowhere mentioned that all staff were now contemplating on wearing the Muslim headscarf. Why, I wanted know. "Mars has stopped moving and now the sun is rising from the west on that planet. It will soon happen to earth too! It is a sign of Qiyaamah!", she said. And this is the part that struck me as outrageous: "We even called up the high Majlis on Islamic affairs to clarify this", she said. When asked what was their answer she replied they also agreed this was really happening. Apparently an awesome level of credulity is an essential part of the job requirement for those working at the Islamic Majlis.

First of all, this same email made the rounds 2 years back and 2 more years before that. What's more, this visible optical phenomenon has been happening for as long as these planets have been in existence. But no doomsday and no sun rising from west has been witnessed. One thing did rise recently though: buruga sales.

These emails are designed to coerce the just-enough-educated-to-read, massively credulous young Muslims the world over into a state of fear - NOT necessarily a state of true faith. Basically, it is nothing but a scam, well supported by turban clad Mullahs and clerics everywhere.

NASA's Mars Program website has a good explanation for the doomsday sign from God here. Please read it before you dive into a buruga out of fear. And besides, don't you think God would know if you pulled a fast one on him? Tsk, tsk!

Update: Thanks Assey for the correction

January 23, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (45)

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The licensed FM radio stations are now on air and in full operations. And in my opinion it would have been better had the government issued the licenses to bunches of giggling bimbos and airheads and have them read off from copy that makes absolutely no sense to them. Wait one damned giggling minute!

Whenever I mention that the new FM stations have much to be desired in the way of actual radio journalism and professional presentation I get the usual Maldivian style reply: "Give them a break...it has only been a few months since they started!". We can spend 30 years taking baby steps without much improvement so I am tackling the problem right now! I refuse to wait.

No, if I had a choice I would not give them a break. It is not like radio is a new medium in this country. Most of the current population were probably born to the sound of Baajaveri Hendhuneh on VOM. We certainly should expect professionalism and basic journalistic ethics from the new stations. Are we to expect them to dwell in infancy and then improve as if we've never had radio before?

The thing that really gets to me above anything else is the voice quality of the female presenters. Most of our Dhivehi women have squeaky voices that sound like rubber duckies forced down toilets. So when we have them on air they sound like rubber duckies forced down toilets recorded via a microphone. There is one female presenter on DhiFM that I thought had a unique voice - she sounds like a pre-pubescent boy. Please, ma'am, stop talking, you're uprooting the remaining hair on my body just by doing that!

And to make matters worse the content of the FM stations, especially Capital Radio, is such that actual content itself makes for about 10%. The remaining 90% is squeaky female voices giggling between every other word. Can I ask you something? Are they constantly on E?

To make matters worse still, the presenters display a lack of general knowledge that makes George W sound like the guy who wrote the Encyclopedia Brittanica. One female presenter on DhiFM was heard saying "O-he-oh". That's Ohio (O-Hai-O) for everyone else!

And did anyone notice how so full of sexual undertones and flirtatious vibes the call-in conversations are? I get the feeling that if the presenters are female, men call-in and want to have sex with them. If male presenters receive calls from females the presenters want to have sex with them, if possible, through thin air. Here's a sampling I just made up (but you could swear you heard it on Capital Radio):

Presenter: What are you doing? (Kee thi kuranee?)
Caller: Am stroking my cat. He's big.
Presenter: How big?
Caller: Pretty big. You want to stroke it?

To hear the gory details just turn on your FM station.

I have a theory for this kind of behaviour. And it is that we have absolutely nothing else to do. The call-in conversations are so damned boring even my radio switches to standby mode by itself. What is there to talk about when the most interesting thing that can happen during the course of day is the sight of Maldivian Air Taxi flying making the landing approach?

Oh, and please, if you are going to speak English with an accent at least get the pronunciation right. One presenter goes too far to be too cool to actually say "Sore, this is our last song for the night-ah". It's not "sore", it is "so". And what's with the "ah"? Oh I get it, all part of the sexually suggestive vocab.

So what's an honest to public station to do? I have a suggestion: force your studio staff to read more outside of the studio and listen to other radio stations. Perhaps then between the squeaky giggles and the "ahs" they'll at least sound credible.

January 23, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (20)

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I'd like to have a few words with the author of this blog, on which Maldivians of all shapes and sizes and mentality have poured out their inner most and mature feelings for the entire world to see. There are certain things the author has to know about us Maldivians before he can write about us.

The kitchen knife attack on our president is nothing new. He is probably attacked with various kitchen utensils on a daily basis. These attacks usually occur in his own kitchen where a kitchen knife or spatula wielding first lady, fuming over feudal family quarrels, lunges at him. He survives these attacks simply because, unlike your president, he was well trained in the marital, sorry, martial arts at Azhar university. In fact, if you slow down the non-existent knife attack video you will see how he pushed the pimply boyscout in the way of the knife with almost sublime Matrix-style manual dexterity thereby making it look like the boy saved him. A true hero never owns up to his heroism.

And unlike your president, ours knows his own people. That's why he was armed to the teeth when he took oath some 30 years ago. He knew there will be an attack on his body. The only problem was he didn't realize it would take us indolent Maldivians 30 long years to finally pull it off. So he made a small error in his calculations, so what? We finally pulled it off, whatever the paleolithic utensil maybe.

And how dare you mock our lilliputian country and our lilliputian people! We maybe small but our thinking is big. That's why we go to your stinking country for education and medicine and spend our last dollar on foreign sex workers and alcohol. Who do you think benefits from all this? You? We may be short and tiny but our egos are tall and our wallets fat so don't you dare comment on that!

We have built this country on the backs of foreign workers from countries like yours and we will not think twice before we insult them. We are proud of our imported foreign everything, including our Islamic identity. Oh, and lucky you didn't say anything about our religion because even if we were in a hotel room in your country in the middle of some good rabbit action, we will burn you with insult for insulting our religion.

Don't you get it? We don't see irony because we are irony personified. Are you irony personified? No! You are just a foreigner, no? And you might not know this but our bark is worse than our bite. We will teach you a lesson verbally and pour our feces out on your blogs and feel damn good about it. What are you going to do? You want to take this outside? Then go alone.

We are patriotic and religious and traitorous and infidels all at the same time, you piece of Mlesna tea bag! Can you say that about your people? We talk the talk and we will walk the walk soon, one day, not now, but soon. Just you wait and see.

January 13, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (20)

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When I made a kindly remark about the beautiful tuft of thick black hair on the crown of the new born child I was warned by the father that saying such things might inadvertently cast "esfeena" on the baby. That's bloody rubbish, I tell him. "Yeah, I don't think anyone believes that crap anymore", he chuckled.

In many cultures the "esfeena" is known as the curse of the Evil Eye.

The evil eye is commonly associated with envy, and transmitted by a look, touch or verbal expression of envy, or by excessive praise without a blessing (Elworthy).

This Evil Eye business has been a recurring notion for as long as I can remember. It is believed it can be cast on anyone, but children, women and pregnant women are especially vulnerable. It is, of course, a superstitious belief like so many others beliefs in our society. What is different about this one is that it is not unique to us.

The notion of the Evil Eye is fairly widely spread and very ancient. In his book "Wet and Dry: The Evil Eye", Professor Alan Dandes theorizes that the concept of the evil eye may have its origins in ancient Mesopotamia from where it might have propagated to Europe and India. The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft says the oldest references to it appear in the cuneiform texts of the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians, around 3000 BC. Other texts say it is much older suggesting that prehistoric cultures had documented the belief in various ways. Although believed by many to be a universal concept, the Evil Eye is non-existent in Chinese culture and various other Asian cultures - including those of aboriginal Australia.

In our society, especially in the olden days, children were made to wear eye shadow (adhun or kohl), as they still do in some parts of India - as a way to ward off or stop the evil eye from entering the child. Amulets and charms containing verse from the Quran were also worn until recently. Today, although practices such as these have largely disappeared (my observation), the belief is still held by many - but only as an afterthought to a praising comment. And since the ancient times of Sumer, the eye shadow has definitely found its use in fashion and makeup than anything else in modern times.

So how did this superstitious belief find its way into our culture? It is very likely that our notion of Evil Eye may have its origins with the introduction of Islam.

History shows that the Bedouins were quite a superstitious people and among their beliefs, even after the arrival of Islam, the evil eye remained a powerful defining social belief. In fact, numerous Arab and Islamic sources show ample evidence of the prevailing belief, then and now, in almost all Arab societies of the region. The belief in the evil eye is also found in Islamic doctrine and it is here, in Quran and the Hadith, that we come across the most important pieces of evidence to support how this belief may have been transmitted to us with the arrival of the religion.

In Quran, Surah al-Falaq [113:5], "And from the evil of the envier when he envies,".

In Hadith reported by Sahih Muslim [026.5427], the Prophet saying "The influence of an evil eye is a fact; if anything would precede the destiny it would be the influence of an evil eye..."

It is clear how the above lines could have shaped our belief system over the centuries. Our beliefs may have evolved since the olden days and we might know for a fact that the Evil Eye is only a superstitious belief - that envious feelings and jealousy towards others don't physically affect them. Such beliefs can be constructed and attributed to anything if we want because illnesses, accidents and generally bad "omens" are nothing but everyday occurrences in a less-than perfect physical world.

The Evil Eye is a good example of our inclination to believe in superstitions. The fact that the Evil Eye has found its way into religious texts and prophetic words stands as testimony to this very human trait. There is, after all, only a thin line separating religious beliefs and superstition.

References:
The evil eye and cultural beliefs among the Bedouin tribes of the Negev, Middle East
The Evil Eye
The Evil Eye
Evil Eye

January 12, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (12)

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When my four year old suddenly asked "Daddy, why is the ocean so deep?" I struggled to give him a reasonable answer - one that would satisfy his curious little mind. Then before I could end the reply: "Well, if we could remove all the water from all the oceans then we will see that the surface of the earth is formed...", he fired another question: "Why are some clouds white and some dark?". Kids have no patience.

My son, like other boys and girls of his age, is becoming increasingly curious about the environment and the world around him. Almost everyday there is a session of quick-fire questions that has me stumped for a minute or two. At first I thought the questions were too difficult to answer until I realised the problem was with my limited knowledge of general science. Not with his questions.

So, as I was collecting my thoughts to answer the clouds question he asked me another question - about clouds. This time he answered his own question: "Is it because dark clouds have more water in them?". That's brilliant, I jumped, quite surprised at the little man's reasoning. So, obviously proud and excited about his ability to think, I started to tell him about how water crystals in clouds scatter light from the sun. I had lost him by the end of my first sentence, for he was now Batman beating the hell out of whatever the nemesis he was facing at that point. Super heroes seldom have time for details.

Some details will have to wait until he's a little older, I told myself.

The evolving mind of my son, and of course my daughter too, makes me reflect upon how I would have been at that age. Naturally, I have no memory of being that curious at all. One thing is certain: even if I had asked such questions I doubt I would have received an accurate answer - let alone an answer that was scientifically and logically sound. In my opinion, there were two things that contributed to this handicap.

One was the lack of scientific and general knowledge of parents as a result of poor - or non-existent - education in those days. The other is, to counter the lack of proper education on wide range of subjects; there might have been an increase in teaching and exposure to religious ideologies and dogma leading to a general reliance on the concept of a creator to provide an answer for everything.

So, had I asked them about the ocean or the clouds what would have been their reply? Obviously, that God created the oceans and the clouds that way. That would have, with one strike, ended and completely blocked the path for my inquiry - or any future inquiries, for that matter. Unless, that is, I was curious to know who God was. In which case, an inescapable loop of circular reasoning would have made my parents rather unhappy. But as far as I can remember, that never happened.

Modern, educated parents have a moral responsibility to divulge scientifically accurate or logically sound information to their children if they intend to fuel the desire of the children's minds to learn and absorb more. If we are unable to answer correctly and logically then we have to be honest and tell them we don't know. Or if possible that we will find out and tell them. We have to know there are very few things that a child will question that science or common sense or even logic cannot answer.

To instead selfishly say that god created oceans deep and some clouds white and others dark, without any explanation, is not only concealing the true complexity, eloquence and beauty of nature but is also helping to closedown critical faculties of young minds at an early age. When we say the sky turns red at sunset because God created it so, we are depriving children of their right to learn and inquire about natural phenomena. When we say the ocean is black-blue because God created it to hide terrifying creatures of the deep from us, we are teaching and laying the foundation for intellectual dishonesty.

Our children deserve better answers to their questions to help nurture their curiosity about the environment and the world around them. As for my son, he has yet to ask me about death even though he has killed many of the Dark Knight's worst enemies with one slash of his imaginary weapon. And when he does finally pop the question about death, I know what my answer will not be.

January 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (10)

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