Random Reflexions

The sensual haunting voice in Mea Culpa, the fourth track on Enigma's 17 years old album MCMXC a.D. commences with these sinful confessions of the conscience:

Je ne dors plus (I can't sleep anymore)
Je te desire (I desire you)
Prends moi (Take me)
Je suis a toi (I'm yours)
Mea culpa (It's my fault)
Je veux aller au bout de me fantasmes (I want to go to the end of my fantasies)
Je sais que c'est interdit (I know it is forbidden)
Je suis folle (I am crazy)
Je m'abandonne (I am letting myself go)
Mea Culpa (It's my fault)

Music can affect the very depths of the human soul. It has the power to inject a sense of heightened emotion - both of euphoria and sorrow and everything in between. And why not? It is usually created from the synthesis of creative genius and innermost desires that emanate from that very same depth of the artist's soul. Music is the ultimate form of creative expressionism - fusing the beauty of poetry and words with the stimulation of the aural senses with melodic tones.

Music has been an integral part of human life ever since modern man emerged some 50,000 years ago. Music is such a basic constituent of human life that it has been played in one form or other in all ancestral human societies, large and small. This is how it has been and this is how it will be. Unless...

According to this report on Minivan News, 22 of the top-most mullahs of Maldives have come out and declared Music haram (prohibited as ordained by god himself). What these fools don't know is that music is so diverse and so subjective that what one may find especially detestable might be tasteful to another.

Even moderate mullahs have a very faint idea as to what music constitutes. Music of certain type, they say, is allowed while others aren't. But how do we determine which music is haram? Certain types of music is therapeutic to some while being completely abhorrent to others. Who's to say, for instance, that there aren't women (and men) who get sexually aroused listening to Ali Rameez's singsong voice, whether he is singing an erotically charged pop single or a hymn?

But what is most troubling is that among these 22 mullahs was a representative of the Human Rights Commission of the Maldives. I know the commission is a farce but this is taking it to the level of outright insanity. What is this guy doing at the commission and why was he allowed to concur on a statement that contravenes on a very basic human right - the right to listen to whatever one wants? No one seems to have noticed this - changing what little doubt I had into certainty that Maldivians are apathetic and definitely uncritical in their thinking.

What these mullahs want is to create a nation of unfeeling and uncreative zombies. When the very establishment that has been charged with upholding and fighting for the rights of the people is infiltrated by this kind of backward mentality we have got to put on our thinking hats and start asking questions.

We have got to ask why we are still concerned about such mundane issues? Why are we not investing our time on creating, developing and and making ourselves useful to the world? Are we doomed into a cycle of bitter arguments and bickering over what our women should wear and what our ears should listen?

A religiously sanctioned ban on music? Unthinkable and impossible, come to mind, doesn't it? But if we continue to sit on our rear-ends and swallow the nonsense in large gulps as we always do then the full force of organized radicalism will impose itself and drain the last remnant of what's left of the hopeful flame in our creative souls and replace it with cold hard darkness.

Make no mistake about that.

NOTES: The lyrics and translation of the song was retrieved from one of the numerous lyrics websites - which one, I forget. The cover of MCMXC a.D. feature an abstract style painting of a cross and a monk, the sounds and lyrics are Christian in nature and much is derived from the Book of Revelations (according to Wikipedia). None of these mattered to anyone some 17 years ago when I first listened to the album, of course.

March 22, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (25)

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It was some 20 years ago that I first read 2001: A Space Odyssey. And two years later I watched Stanley Kubrick's genius at work in the film adaptation of the novel and was completely blown away in delightful shock and awe. It was as if someone had taken the dreams and my imaginary travels into space, feeling its deafening silence, making contact with the Monolith and whispering "My God, it's full of stars" as did David Bowman, and made it real - just like that.

Several months later I picked up the first book of what would eventually be a four part series, that would have me engrossed for many days and years, from my dad's library of SciFi. Rendezvous with Rama, and the rest of the series kept me in constant wonder and always expecting to see a film adaptation which, of course, never came. I later went onto purchase the Rama computer game.

Arthur C. Clarke's brilliant science fiction have been a staple on the book shelves at our home ever since I could remember. Along with the sequels to 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Rama series I've read some 26 of his works.

Without a doubt, he leaves a colourful legacy of creativity, brilliance and astounding visionary prowess. But in my opinion, more than anything it is how his work, both in fiction and research, had advocated and popularised scientific thought in the last century that he should be remembered for. True, it was he who first envisioned the geostationary communications satellite and it was he, in his remarkable novel Rendezvous with Rama, that saw the creation of an asteroid detection system. But on a more personal level, it was his tremendous body of science fiction that would pave the way and condition my mind, as I hope it had done for others, for scientific thought.

I once had the privilege of dining just a table away from the great man but was at a loss for want of courage to go and ask for an autograph on a napkin. How I wish I had now.

Arthur C. Clarkes vision and brilliant mind and his always positivist outlook for the future of mankind has undeniably influenced modern technology and life. His name will be remembered along with other great geniuses as Newton and Galileo and Einstein. Without him, the world is truly at a loss.

"The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible." - Arthur C. Clarke

March 20, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)

The national day has come and gone and what little nationalism we had in our blood was on display as many motorcycles, cars and other vehicles sported the national flag for the day.

I have always wondered and questioned this peculiar kind of nationalism we have. I believe we are more like hesitant patriots. I've written about it previously as well. What is clear now, and this has been true for many decades, is that we are still very confused about where our patriotism lie. And why not, after all, by constitution we are Muslim before we are even Maldivian.

On one of my earlier posts on the subject a reader had commented that our patriotism lies with Palestine and, it goes without saying, with those Islamic nations that are in conflict - either from within or outside. It is as if the only people suffering from hardship, war and conflicts are concentrated in the middle east - specifically in Islamic nations. The popular media outlets, the western ones included, have their heads permanently affixed towards the middle east ready to pounce on a story about the "situation" there. The reason? Oil.

But that's another story.

As a tiny country that has to depend on handouts from richer ones we find ourselves constantly torn between appeasing our "brothers" in oil rich Muslim nations - who we have gone to crawling and begging for who-knows what - and the west - the powers that control the world economy and arms. I think this tug-of-war on our interests and juggling of our patriotism between ourselves and people who we will never ever meet, have made us ambivalent and in a lot of ways confused.

What we need is reviving our sense of nationalism (if ever there was one) - not by shamelessly flaunting religion as a precondition, but by weaving what is left of our culture and heritage together into the unique strand of humanity that we are.

We should start reminding ourselves that we are Maldivian and proud of it simply because we have the centuries old so-called fish blood running through our veins, and because this is our land and sea and because we speak, read and write as one people regardless of our beliefs. But old habits and prejudices die hard. Our forefathers, from the days of the arrival of a foreign religion, had planted the seed of a foreign culture into the very core of our being. The fact that the first 9 letters from Ha to Vaavu are derived from the first 9 Arabic numerals from 1 to 9 is something to think about. And there is the problem of the nation of useful idiots that 30 long years of dissemination of rubbish and lack of real education has created. Our display of patriotism is something to be ashamed of because we really don't know how to display it. What nationalism? What patriotism?

Our leaders have used the facade of religious unity to fool us into believing that we are a proud nation of brothers and sisters because, and as a result, of our one religion. This is a blatant lie. How can we say this today and still keep a straight face? We need to realise that our people, Maldivians - proud or not, come in different shapes, sizes and, more importantly, widely different belief systems.

The instant we say we are united because we are Muslims, that very millisecond in time, the fabric of our nationalism rips into several pieces and our collective patriotism weakens.

So don't talk to me about nationalism.

March 10, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (8)

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