Ancient Monastery in Afghanistan under threat

Image from Science (Vol 329, July 30, 2010)

First it was the Taliban that mindlessly destroyed the 1500 year old statues of Buddha. Now an ancient Buddhist monastery is under threat in Afghanistan from ... a copper mining company!

A Chinese company intends to blow up an ancient Buddhist monastery south of Kabul to make way for a massive copper mine. The plan has sparked outrage among Afghan and French archaeologists, who have recently uncovered more than 100 statues within a large religious complex that includes seven stupas, or tombs built to house the relics of saints.

No seriously? It is amazing that we are even debating blowing up a 1500 year old monastery:

Located in a mountainous region 40 kilometers southeast of the capital, Mes Aynak is a hill topped by a 4500-square-meter monastery. Although the site was spotted by archaeologists in the 1960s, it was never excavated. During the late 1990s, the hill was home to an al-Qaida training camp, according to the 2004 report by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. In recent years, looters have damaged much of the monastery complex in the search for antiquities, says Nader Rassouli, director of Afghanistan's National Institute of Archaeology in Kabul, which is also participating in the current excavations.

Two millennia ago, this region served as a critical conduit in the spread of Buddhism to Central Asia and China, says T. Richard Blurton, an archaeologist and curator at London's British Museum who has excavated in Afghanistan. He says Mes Aynak could provide new data on both the origin and demise of the religion here. Researchers now believe that as late as the 7th century C.E., when Islam arrived in the area, Buddhism was still making inroads as far west as Iran and as far north as Turkmenistan. "It's quite tantalizing to consider how Buddhism coexisted with the new religion," Blurton says. There are also Hindu deities from that late period at Tepe Sardar, a large monastery located in the eastern Afghan city of Ghazni. Further evidence from Mes Aynak could help provide a new picture of religious blending at an important historical juncture, says Blurton.

There is some hope for compromise and coexistence - by creating a protected zone for archaeology. But it looks like the decision is now directly in the hands of Karzai. I hope sanity will prevail in the end.

Read the full article here (you may need subscription to access the full text).

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Mecca Clock: Seeking scientific prestige via borrowed science

There is much fanfare about the recently inaugurated Mecca Clock. It is now the world's largest clock sitting on top of the world's second tallest building - and is visible from a distance of 16 miles (I haven't checked the math on this - but this is what is reported). I have my own personal objections to having sky-scrappers around a spectacular mosque located in a desert. Perhaps, this is coming from my experience living in New Mexico, but I would guess that the pilgrims would favor looking at an open sky rather than tall buildings. But fine. That is a personal opinion on sky-scrappers in Mecca. If one wants to build a gigantic clock - so be it (right, a comparison with the Big Ben).

But the more amusing part comes from the claims by some that Mecca time should replace the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) - because the latter is a remnant of colonial heritage. Hmm...but even if we buy into that, why should it be replaced by Mecca time? Because there is a gigantic clock there??

The reason that the meridian is 0 at Greenwich is because it is the British that solved the longitude problem. Therefore they got to reference a part of England as the main reference point. Names associated with science are often, if not always, symptomatic of the scientific power of the time. Therefore we see that many of the elements discovered in the 20th century have names such as berkelium, americium, californium, etc have American names (though sometimes there were competing claims from Soviet laboratories also). Discover things or solve problems and ye shall have the authority to name things. Heck - more than half of the brightest stars in the sky have Arabic names. This is because Arabic atlases from the medieval time played a key role in the development of modern astronomy - and Arab science was dominant at the time.

It is perhaps a bit immature to ask to change an established world system - simply because one has built a big toy. Do something worthwhile in science and then you will have a chance to name things also. But there are no shortcuts. This requires a serious investment in science and more importantly in creating a scientific minded culture.

And talking about the lack of scientific culture, one of the justifications given for the adoption of Mecca Time is that, according to Yusuf al-Qaradawi - an Egyptian cleric, Mecca is in "perfect alignment with the magnetic north pole", making the city a "zero magnetism zone".

What the heck is he talking about??

So first here is a short primer on magnetic north pole:
Since Earth has a magnetic field, it also has magnetic poles - points where the magnetic field lines point 90 degrees (south or north). The origin of Earth's magnetic field is still as yet an unsolved problem - but the most likely reason is the dynamo effect. But one thing is clear: the magnetic poles change their locations constantly (in fact, poles are also known to reverse over long periods of time and have reversed about 170 times over the last 100 million years! This discovery has played a fascinating role in confirming the idea of plate-tectonics. You can impress your friends with this tid-bit of information to impress your friends).

So one might ask, what is the current location of the magnetic north pole? It seems that it is currently in northern Canada and moving towards Russia at 40 miles per year (magnetic south pole is also moving in Antarctica). Okay - so unless one wants to move Mecca at a similar speed, it may have a hard time keeping WHATEVER alignment Yousuf-al-Qaradawi is talking about.

But but then there is also a more basic question: Shouldn't a whole line on a sphere be affected in the same way from a point on a sphere? I mean, the magnetic field lines are relatively symmetrical. So whatever field Mecca has, it should extend to a whole line equidistant from the north magnetic field.

Of course, this is all a waste of time. The urge to show Mecca's specialty in a scientific language has nothing to do with reality. This is in the same line as Muslims trying to find nuggets of modern science in the Qur'an. Creating scientific institutions takes time. Creating a valuable scientific culture takes patience and persistence. The reality is that Muslims at present lag in science. These pseudoscientific efforts are a short-cut to make Muslims (and yes, these kind of "proofs" with this kind of evidence can only be accepted by believers) happy in a make-believe (yes, pun intended) world.

Science, the way it is practiced today, unfortunately places emphasis on evidence. Perhaps, Yousuf-al-Qaradawi can make up his own rules to understand his own physical world.

To the Moon...

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Related Posts:
I had a similar reaction when I first heard about the replacement of GMT two years ago. Hey - at least I'm being consistent:
Move over GMT - Here comes a call to adopt Mecca Time instead

You can also check out this post by Nidhal:
Critiquing I'jaz - The claim of "scientific miracles in the Qu'ran"

Or for your entertainment purposes, check out this claim that Mars' retrograde motion proves the day of judgement:
Nonsense about Mars from Pakistan's Business Recorder

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Metaphysical Robotics?

There is an interesting (though also a bit odd) article in yesterday's NYT: The First Church of Robotics. The article jumps all over the map and then turns to religion. It starts of with first addressing the way we talk about artificial intelligence in relation to humans, and vice versa, especially regarding individuality and personhood. Okay, this is all interesting. But then the article takes a turn and asks the following question:

When we think of computers as inert, passive tools instead of people, we are rewarded with a clearer, less ideological view of what is going on — with the machines and with ourselves. So, why, aside from the theatrical appeal to consumers and reporters, must engineering results so often be presented in Frankensteinian light?  

The answer is simply that computer scientists are human, and are as terrified by the human condition as anyone else. We, the technical elite, seek some way of thinking that gives us an answer to death, for instance.

Hmm...well in a way this applies to a lot of fields. Perhaps, we should add biologists and philosophers to the list as well. But why single out AI people? 

This helps explain the allure of a place like the Singularity University. The influential Silicon Valley institution preaches a story that goes like this: one day in the not-so-distant future, the Internet will suddenly coalesce into a super-intelligent A.I., infinitely smarter than any of us individually and all of us combined; it will become alive in the blink of an eye, and take over the world before humans even realize what’s happening.

Some think the newly sentient Internet would then choose to kill us; others think it would be generous and digitize us the way Google is digitizing old books, so that we can live forever as algorithms inside the global brain. Yes, this sounds like many different science fiction movies. Yes, it sounds nutty when stated so bluntly. But these are ideas with tremendous currency in Silicon Valley; these are guiding principles, not just amusements, for many of the most influential technologists.  

Yes, this does sound nutty - especially if these are indeed some of the (major?) guiding principles. But wait, what does it mean to say that these are the guiding principle? Is this something that people are looking as the worst (or best) case scenario and are actively working to form a sentient internet? I can't figure this out from the article. But just this idea of a killer or a benign and guiding internet reminds me of the way many think of extraterrestrials. Either they will be out to kill us (Hawking has rocked this boat recently) or that they will bring us the Encyclopedia Galactica (may be in the shape of an internet :) ).

Okay - so just when I thought I knew where the article was going, it took another turn:

It should go without saying that we can’t count on the appearance of a soul-detecting sensor that will verify that a person’s consciousness has been virtualized and immortalized. There is certainly no such sensor with us today to confirm metaphysical ideas about people, or even to recognize the contents of the human brain. All thoughts about consciousness, souls and the like are bound up equally in faith, which suggests something remarkable: What we are seeing is a new religion, expressed through an engineering culture.

I'm not so sure what is so remarkable about this. Humans have always invented religions based on the surrounding culture. Today we live in a technological world, so is it really "remarkable" that new religions incorporate that? Also, check out all the UFO religions of the 20th century - and how they have evolved based on the UFO euphoria of the mid-century through the abduction claims of the late 20th century. I think these religions (alongside these computer-based religions) are fascinating because they represent a particular human response to the modern world. But this, to me looks like a predicable development. But the article then goes on to develop another point:

What I would like to point out, though, is that a great deal of the confusion and rancor in the world today concerns tension at the boundary between religion and modernity — whether it’s the distrust among Islamic or Christian fundamentalists of the scientific worldview, or even the discomfort that often greets progress in fields like climate change science or stem-cell research.

If technologists are creating their own ultramodern religion, and it is one in which people are told to wait politely as their very souls are made obsolete, we might expect further and worsening tensions. But if technology were presented without metaphysical baggage, is it possible that modernity would not make people as uncomfortable? 

I don't think that it is this kind of "metaphysical baggage" that has played a dominant role in the discomfort with modernity. Again, to make a parallel with the search for life in the universe, people keep on speculating that major religions would be very uncomfortable with the idea of the discovery of life and/or intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. But most of the major religions are not only okay with this, but have given some thought to the idea as well. It is the social and cultural side effects of science & technology (for example, the ease of interaction with other cultures and the no check on their influences) that makes many uncomfortable with modernity (and yes, many people have commented on it - along with numerous scifi books and movies). As far as the tensions with modernity are concerned, a lot of that has to with social and cultural factors, and less to do with metaphysical questions (though sometimes they so get intertwined - but eve then, I don't think metaphysical questions play a dominant role). So what is the final message from the article:

Technology is essentially a form of service. We work to make the world better. Our inventions can ease burdens, reduce poverty and suffering, and sometimes even bring new forms of beauty into the world. We can give people more options to act morally, because people with medicine, housing and agriculture can more easily afford to be kind than those who are sick, cold and starving.

But civility, human improvement, these are still choices. That’s why scientists and engineers should present technology in ways that don’t confound those choices.

We serve people best when we keep our religious ideas out of our work.

Hmm...sure. I'm not sure this message required the whole article. But what is the danger in the metaphysical ponderings regarding this kind of AI? After all, this will give us some good ideas regarding Caprica.

Read the full article here.

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For a Real Islamic Calendar...

This is a weekly post by Nidhal Guessoum (see his earlier posts here). Nidhal is an astrophysicist and Professor of Physics at American University of Sharjah.


In my previous post, I described why each year, as Ramadan nears it start (or end), the Muslim world witnesses a widespread confusion over what should actually be a matter of calendar construction. I also described the various complications (telescopes, CCD) that have recently been added to the problem. Finally, I explained that the real issue is the jurists – and many in the general population – who insist on sticking to traditional approaches by putting them squarely on religious (Sunna) footing. I concluded my post by stating that the solution lies elsewhere, i.e. really back to the calendar nature of the problem; I wrote: “So what’s the solution to this state of affairs? An Islamic calendar, of course, which I’ll discuss next time.”

It’s not like the Muslim world has never had an Islamic Calendar. In fact, the idea and practice of a calendar in the Islamic nation goes back to the earliest days, since the Hijri calendar was established by the (second) caliph Umar, who took office only two years after the death of Prophet Muhammad. The nature of the calendar (lunar, with no intercalation month) itself goes back to the Prophet and the Qur’an.

The earliest great Muslim astronomers, particularly Al-Battani (850-929) devised the “arithmetic” calendar, which was based on the simple following arithmetic rule:

• Months must alternate between 30 and 29 days;
• One day is added to some of the 12^th months, so that those (leap) years then have 355 days,; this is done so as to keep as much concordance as possible between the starts of the months according to this calendar and the appearance of the new crescents month after month;
• The leap years are those that satisfy the following rule: the remainder of the division of the year’s number (e.g. 1428) by 30 must be 2, 5, 7, 10, 13, 16, 18, 21, 24, 26, or 29. (For example the division of 1428 by 30 gives 47 with a remainder of 18, so 1428 is a leap year in this calendar).

With this rule, the average number of days in a month (averaged over 30 years) is 29.53 days, which is exactly the average number of days in between two new moons or two full moons. This calendar was first implemented by the Fatimide caliph Al-Hakim (985-1021). However, this calendar was used for “civil” purposes only (payment of salaries and such), not for “religious” ones, because it was obvious that it was often contradicted by the actual observations of the new crescent; it continued to be used until late in the 20^th century.

Saudi Arabia, which to my knowledge is the only country today to use a hijri/lunar calendar for civil purposes (all others use the Gregorian one), implements a different one, the “Umm al-Qura” (another name for Mecca) calendar, which has existed since 1950, and which rule was changed in 1998 and again in 2002, basically checking for the time of the lunar conjunction and the relative settings of the moon and the sun on the eve of the new month.

Such calendars carry the huge defect of being not very concordant with crescent sightings, which is why they are not used for religious purposes. Actually, this is only a minor reason, and is important only for people like me who are convinced of the necessity of implementing a calendar for both civil and religious purposes. The major reason is, as mentioned above, the refusal of many (including the overwhelming majority of Muslim jurists, most of whom are traditionalists) to do away with the practice of waiting until the eve of Ramadan (and other holy occasions) to ascertain the start of the month by someone actually sighting the crescent.

But at least to remove the minor problem (the lack of concordance between the calendar’s dates and the crescent observations), several astronomers  (Muslim and non-Muslims) have proposed calendar constructions that could solve the problem fully and globally, for they would not only tell people when each month will start, the dates would be confirmed by actual sighting – for those who would want to go check.

Astronomers like the Malaysian Ilyas, the British McNaughton, the Moroccan Abdurrazik, the Pakistani-American Shaukat, the Jordanian Odeh, and myself, have proposed various constructs. Deliberations (in meetings and conferences) over the past decade or so have led to a “convergence” toward two different solutions: the fully unified calendar of Abdurrazik and Shaukat, which proposes a single rule for the start of any month everywhere in the world; the bi-zonal calendar (Guessoum and Odeh), which splits the world into two large regions (the old continents and the new world) and devises two slightly differing calendars (which agree about 75 % of the time and differ by one day in other times).

It may seem obvious that the unified calendar is a better one – and hence to suggest a bi-zonal calendar seems superfluous – but there are pros and cons to each proposal: the unified calendar does not ensure enough compliance with the crescent’s visibility in the Islamic world, while the bi-zonal calendar gives up some of the unity but ensures (for the religious authorities) that the months so determined are almost fully in accordance with crescent observations.

And so if the problem is fully understood, and Muslim astronomers have labored hard and devised solutions, why is the Muslim world reluctant to adopt them? Because many still find it difficult to go beyond the old traditional ways of observing the crescent on “the night of doubt” in order to determine the start of the month. Once that mental block has been removed, the problem will be solved rather quickly and easily. But again, I must insist, to talk about a “civil calendar” that gets violated every time someone “sights” a crescent (or something) on the eve of a religious occasion is nonsensical. A real calendar is one that is used for all purposes. Today we are quite able to implement one; Islam has a chance to move forward and solve this serious, long-standing and disturbing socio-religious problem.

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Science & Religion via spiritual ecology

I have recently couple of posts about some positive environmental movements in the Muslim world (see here, here and here). This narrative of environmental protection resonates well within the Islamic contact and Green Islam can not only really take-off, but with a billion Muslims worldwide, it can have a significant impact on the planet. On the thoughtful 13.7: Cosmos & Culture blog, Marcelo Gleiser suggests that spiritual ecology may be one way of moving beyond the tried old debates regarding science & religion. He considers preservation of life as a moral universal, and from their to the preservation of the planet:

Life here is not restricted to humans. Once we realize how deeply our existence depends on the planet that we inhabit, we understand that we must act to preserve all life forms. The moral universal of life necessarily leads to a spiritual ecology whereby we, as the dominant species in this world, act as guardians of life. So, the spiritual dimension that is so important to us humans finds expression in our devotion to our planet and its life forms.

This sense of spiritual connection with Nature is celebrated both in science and religion. From Einstein to Saint Teresa of Ávila, there is universal agreement that the world is sacred in a very fundamental way. Perhaps the success of the movie Avatar is an expression of the growing need to find common ground for humanity based on the preservation of the planet and, of course, ourselves.

People may have other ideas in mind for what a possible moral universal is. But whatever they are, it’s hard to see any more basic than the respect for life and the planet that so spectacularly harbors it.

Okay - but I hope he doesn't put too much stock in the hokey/noble-savage environmentalism depicted in Avatar (I think a world where people sit next to a tree singing that awful song may not be worth saving after all :) ). Nevertheless, this is a case where Islam and science can have a mutually beneficial interaction.

Read the full post by Marcelo Gleiser here.

See related posts:
Eco-Islam and a "Green Imam" in Tanzania
Green Muslims
Masdar - Abu Dhabi: The Silicon Valley of Renewable Energy?

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This is so off-topic - and yet somehow related...

So finally an excuse to put cat-pictures on the blog (tip from Laura for these Cat-Tastic fashions). Now I had just posted about the fantastic science section at Kinokuniya bookstore in Kuala Lumpur. Well, well. It seems this cat is also all dressed up for Kinokuniya - though probably in Tokyo):

Hey - c'mon. This is related to the previous post :) . And just for the heck of it, here is a bonus pic:

Now, I hope my cat - Billy the Kit (yes, he is from New Mexico) - also reads this post and learns a bit about fashion. Forget about dressing up, he makes it harder for me to even blog:

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Blogging from Malaysia: Science books addendum

Yes, the blog is still alive and I'm still in Malaysia. It has been a fascinating trip so far and I will post a bit more about my experience here tomorrow. In the mean time, here is an addendum to my earlier post on the lack of science books in local bookstores. I still stand behind my previous concerns as small stores are more reflective of the general interest. Nevertheless, following the advice of our radio astronomer, Kevin, I did go to Kinokuniya at Suria KLCC - and check this out:

Very cool and it definitely puts to shame many of the large bookstores in the US. Yup - all of the panels in the picture - as far as the eye can see - are filed under Popular Science (I think you can almost detect the curvature of the Earth in this picture...). Unpopular sciences, like biology, zoology, chemistry, physics, have all separate sections here. Hmm...it seems that astronomy is unequivocally popular.

But not just that, the right opposite to it, there is a Discovery Science Center - and it clearly looks like that science is hot in there.

The center looked pretty good, but I couldn't check it. It had already closed for the day. However, from the gift shop, I did buy the memoir of Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor - Malaysia's first astronaut (check out an earlier post about his mission and on related religion here). And talking about space, in the same mall, I found a life-sized model of the new NASA's shuttle replacement - and its new booster.

And no, I don't think this is part of NASA's outreach to the Muslim world. At least, I hope not :)

And finally, it is not just science that is popular here. Even philosophy shows up prominently in the mall:

Sorry Laura. It seems that philosophy is still only for men. Okay - will give another update soon. But did I mention that the Petronas Twin Towers look quite spectacular at night? Wiki tells me that the cross-section of the towers is based on Rub el Hizb - an Islamic symbol with two overlapping squares. Here is a picture of the towers:

This is it for now...

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Ramadan by CCD

This is a weekly post by Nidhal Guessoum (see his earlier posts here). Nidhal is an astrophysicist and Professor of Physics at American University of Sharjah.

Ramadan is almost here, so this is the time for the annual saga of “when do we start the month of fasting” (and later “when does it end?”) – according to the astronomers and/or according to the Muslim jurists/scholars… In a contribution I made to this blog a couple of months ago, I reported on a conference that had just taken place in Abu Dhabi on issues at the interface between astronomy and Islamic jurisprudence, including the topics of the determination of Islamic months and calendar, the calculation of prayer times in (high-latitude) places where the usual definitions do not apply, etc. I mentioned then the chaos that we continue to witness whenever an occasion like the start of Ramadan comes around.

Why is there a problem in knowing when a month (Ramadan or other) is supposed to start or end if, after all, months are defined by the motions and (apparent) positions of the Sun and/or the Moon with respect to the Earth? Well, there are two reasons for this problem: one minor and one major. The minor difficulty is that the astronomical problem is quite complicated because the month starts not when the Moon achieves “conjunction” (lining up) with the Sun and the Earth, but rather by the “visibility” of the new crescent, and this definition introduces atmospheric (local and seasonal) factors, not to mention human sighting capabilities and such. (Some jurists have suggested changing the definition to a purely astronomical one, i.e. one based on simple conjunction, but such scholars have remained an extreme minority.) Even with those complicated factors, we have made such great progress in the past few decades that we now can predict when and where (by small-size regions) the crescent will or will not be visible on any given night. The major problem that still remains is the literalistic insistence of many scholars (and traditionalists are still largely dominant in the Muslim world today) that predictions and determinations by calculations are not acceptable, that testimonies of actual sightings of the new crescent be the determining criterion for starting or ending the month. Moreover, Muslim jurists of each country and school of thought have to decide whether observations made in other regions (nearby or far away) can be accepted or not…

And so, as you can imagine, all this leads to chaos with conflicting, and oftentimes ridiculous/impossible reports being exchanged and debated on the eve of Ramadan, sometimes live on TV… We then get one country’s officials (the religious and the political establishment) announcing the start of the month for the next day, and other countries rejecting the claims and postponing the start till the following day; other countries will have started the month a day earlier on various criteria; and so on and so forth. We now regularly end up with the Muslim world forming a mosaic of dates for the start or the end of Ramadan over 3 or 4 different days…

Now, if that is not enough in terms of confusion and chaos, in recent times we have had the added complication of deciding whether the usage of telescopes and binoculars for sighting the crescent is (islamically) acceptable or not for starting and ending Ramadan. And of course, there are two camps on this issue – among the Muslim jurists, that is.

And that’s where the CCDs pop up – to add more complications and “fun” to the circus. Indeed, in the past few years, CCD/digital imaging, which of course has been used in Astronomy for decades now, came into the field of crescent observations. Why only in the past few years? Because it turns out that imaging a thin new crescent, which stays above the horizon only a short time (due to the thick with air, dust, humidity, and pollution), is conceptually an easy matter but practically a very complicated task requiring adequate setup, know-how, and practice. But now we do have a handful of people, some in Europe and some in the Arab world, who can image the crescent in broad daylight (see the accompanying image). Is that an acceptable way of establishing the start of Ramadan? The debate is raging right now, with the majority of Muslims (even the learned ones) weighing against it – though the tide is slowly turning…

This Ramadan promises to be an interesting case in point. Indeed, the (geocentric) conjunction of the Moon with the Sun and the Earth occurs on Tuesday August 10 at 03:08 GMT (astronomers say UT, universal time), and it will be impossible to see the crescent by any means on that evening in Asia, Europe, and the northern half of Africa; it will be possible to see it by telescopes in the southern half of Africa and North American as well as in most of Central America; and it may be visible by naked eyes in South America. So these different possibilities lead to all kinds of possible conclusions/decisions... But the interesting part is the fact that the crescent is expected to be somewhat easily imaged by CCD (digital camera and small telescope) during the day! I can’t wait for the debates – though I can already foresee the chaos in the decisions that will come with all this.

So what’s the solution to this state of affairs? An Islamic calendar, of course, which I’ll discuss next time.

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Also see an earlier post: The Lunacy Around the Islamic Lunar Calendar

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Blogging from Malaysia: Dawkins amongst the believers

It seems that having God in the book title has its own advantages. Here is a picture of Dawkins' The God Delusion placed next to not just religious books - but very preachy books. I doubt that this is deliberate 0 but it is great that it provides an alternative perspective to books such as God is my CEO and Everything about God. This picture was taken at a bookstore in Summit Shopping Center in Subang Jaya. Ahmm...also note that all of these God-related books are placed in the Music section. This is because the religion section overflowed, and there weren't many books in the Music section. In case you are wondering, no there was no Science section in this bookstore either (see my earlier lament about another bookstore in the same shopping center). May be there are advantages of overusing God metaphors in science books after all...

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Blogging from Malaysia: Hijabs, mini-skirts, and some robotics

Here are my second impressions from Malaysia (see the earlier post here): I think I'm quite stuck by strong identities expressed by the way people dress here (I'm in Selangor right now, about 20 km from Kuala Lumpur). The three groups being the Muslim Malays, the Chinese, and the Indians. It is fascinating to see women wearing hijabs and long-dresses walking side-by-side with those wearing shorts and mini-skirts. Now, this is also seen in US in UK also, but the ratio is usually quite skewed. Here we are talking roughly even numbers - at least in the shopping malls. But more importantly, no one seems to care what the other person is wearing. Perhaps this is because the boundaries are set for different identities and people are comfortable with these lines. Perhaps, a bigger problem comes in when people from the same group are fighting to define what the correct way is (that may still be the case within, for example, the Muslim population - and it can generate its own debate). I actually don't know what is the dynamic when members within these groups adopt a dress-code of the other group (yes, I know I can go and read some articles on the topic - but remember, these are my quick reflections).

Considering the burqa/niqab debates taking place from France to Syria, this pluralism regarding dress code stood out for me here. Not to mention that I caught a portion of a lingerie fashion show in the middle of a shopping mall (hey - I was just walking by, but I then I had to stop there for purely academic reasons), and it was fascinating to see many hijab-wearing women watching the show, not with a frown, but with a smile. At the same time, several of the people I've met here (from medical doctors to cab-drivers) have expressed concerns about the increasing use of religion as a wedge for political purposes. May be the times are changing - but there is also a lot of economic incentive in maintaining this harmony. Also, while we are at it, check out this article about a Malaysian reality show, Imam Muda, where the contestants vie to be the best imam. And the show is a hit! I'm sure it is just like Jersey Shore, but set in Malaysia :)

Nevertheless, I find it fascinating here that you cannot really tell who is a Malaysian - simply by their appearance.

On an unrelated note, I've now had my fill of listening to Lady Gaga here. She is everywhere. The first 30 times was okay, but now I think it is getting a bit too much.

On a positive note, I ran into a robotics shop for kids (see creative robotics) in the mall. On the one hand it was great to see kids of different age-groups completely absorbed in getting their robots working correctly (they were using lego-robots with a specific software that controlled robot's movements). On the other hand, we all know from Caprica and Battlestar Galactica, what happens in the future. So here are pictures of some kids that may screw-up our future :)

More from Malaysia later...

And yes, my luggage eventually arrived. Thanks for asking.

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Noah's ark and the missing luggage problem...

So I'm in Malaysia, but my luggage isn't. Hence this post may appear a bit scruffy - like my current state. My first impressions of Kuala Lumpur: Modern and tidy. Sky scrappers and modern mosques. Generally courteous. Some chaos, but relatively calm traffic (okay - so I usually set this bar quite low with the traffic in Karachi - or worse, Rawalpindi/Islamabad). The train service from the airport (KLAI) to the city center was fantastic and fast - it got me there (70 kms) in 28 minutes (hey - when are we getting a fast train service from Boston to Amherst?).

No, I'm not here to only sing praise - remember, my bags are still sitting somewhere in Hong Kong. So I also happen to walk into a decent-size bookstore today (I think it was called MPH books) in Selangor (about 20 km from the city center). Apart from the regular fiction books, there were many technical books - computer-science, IT, Finance, Business. There was also a full section titled "Statues". I was initially quite impressed - that there was a full section devoted to a particular form of art. As it turns out, they misspelled "Statutes" - and this was the legal-studies section. There were two section devoted to religion, and two equal-sized sections for New-Age. But...but...no science section! I even inquired with the customer service - in case they had again misspelled it as "New-Age" - but no luck. They just didn't think it was important enough to have a section. Sigh...

So while I await for the bags (and the much-needed shaving kit), you can enjoy this 14th century Persian artwork depicting Noah's ark (tip from Tabsir). I'm sure luggage problems must have been a nightmare on the ark. Please also note the comment below the picture:

From Tabsir:

The story of Noah is shared in the three main monotheisms and still inspires creationists who are convinced that opportunist quasi-Neptunist forces from the great Deluge laid down almost all sedimentary layers on Earth. Above is an illustration from the Jami‘ al-tawarikh, produced in 1314/1315 for the Iranian vizier Rashid al-Din. In this case the ark was not the biblical box but a typical Arab dhow of the time with two masts, two steering oars and a rudder. The manuscript is housed in the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art in London.

Illustration from Art of the First Cities, edited by Joan Aruz (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003), p. 491.

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Oh boy - he knows how to make us realize our smallness...

I'm en route to Malaysia right now (sitting at JFK in NY) for a research trip. I have never been been to Malaysia so I'm really looking forward to it. In the mean time, I wanted to keep you busy pondering about our existence. Here is another 9 minute excerpt from Sagan's Pale Blue Dot (see earlier post Sagan on Science, Religion, and the Universe). I think Pale Blue Dot was the only book that Sagan read for an audio book, and the person putting these clips out is doing a great job of utilizing it. I also have it somewhere on a cassette - but don't have any means to play it anymore (a "morbid obsession with Sagan"? ;) ).

So here is Sagan - Consider again that pale blue dot:

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Satellites for the Arab-Muslim world

This is a weekly post by Nidhal Guessoum (see his earlier posts here). Nidhal is an astrophysicist and Professor of Physics at American University of Sharjah.
In past few weeks or months, I have encountered a number of interesting “episodes” related to satellite technology.

First, a few months ago there was a news item in an Egyptian online paper stating that Iran and Qatar were collaborating on a project to put two telecommunications satellites that would compete with the Egyptian Nilesat, which carries hundreds of Arab (and some non-Arab) TV channels. Why? Because Nilesat had just dropped the Iranian (Arabic-speaking) news channel Al-Alam (which is similar to the English-language Press TV, for those who know that one).

Secondly, in the first few days of the Football World Cup, which was to be exclusively broadcast by Al-Jazeera Sports for the whole Arab world, there was that piracy/interfering operation, which prevented millions of Arab football fans from watching large parts of the first few games – an episode that has (unofficially) been placed on the back of the Nilesat operators.

Thirdly, just two weeks ago, Algeria had its second satellite launched, this time by India’s ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) – more on that below. And a few months ago, Iran took a quantum leap by showing that it now could both construct satellites and place them in orbit with its own rockets.

Finally, when I took part in COSPAR-10 (the UN’s “Committee on Space Research” Conference, which every two years draws a few thousands space and astrophysics researchers for a whole week of talks, exhibition, etc.), which ended just a few days ago, I noticed that this time not only did ISRO have a booth there (the only non-western organization to be displaying its achievements – and they are many), it will be sponsoring the next COSPAR meeting, in July 2012, in Mysore (close to Bangalore).

I could go on citing satellite “episodes” in my life, some more centrally than others… For example, that a colleague and I have a few students setting up a receiving station for a meteorological/environmental satellite. Also, the fact that Dubai (my neighbor-emirate) had its first satellite placed into orbit almost exactly a year ago, that Abu Dhabi has now for two consecutive years held a large Space Exhibition and Conference (in January of 2009 and 2010), etc.

Clearly, satellites have been on my mind – particularly in relation to the Arab-Muslim world – for some time now.

India became a “space power” in 1975 when it made its first launch. Before that it had for a decade developed missile and launching capabilities.

The Arab world first focused on telecommunications satellites in the seventies, with Arabsat (Arab Satellite Communications Organization) and (later) Nilesat paying for satellites to be placed in orbit and renting slots for TV and Radio channels. Arabsat was established in 1976 by the member states of the Arab League with a goal of serving the telecommunication, information, culture and education sectors; its first satellite was placed in orbit by Ariane in 1985. It has since had a good half dozen satellites operating on and off.

Somewhat similar to Arabsat, MEASAT (Malaysia East Asia Satellite) is a communications satellite operator with at least three geostationary satellites (MEASAT-1 and MEASAT-2 were launched in 1996 and MEASAT-3 in 2006).

In terms of individual countries, Iraq was the first Arab state to launch a satellite (in December 1989), becoming the tenth nation in the world to put one in orbit. Other Arab countries later had some satellites placed in orbit for them; they largely focused on remote sensing, e.g. Morocco (Maroc-Tubsat, launched in Dec. 2001) and Algeria (with its Alsat-1, developed by Surry and launched in Nov. 2002), or GSM-telephony, e.g. the UAE’s Thuraya (built by Boeing for 1 billion dollars, the first being launched in Oct. 2000, the second in Jan. 2003).

Finally, I should also mention Pakistan: in 2005 it tested its Shaheen II missile, which with a range of some 2,000 km is capable of putting a satellite in space – not to mention military applications.

So we see that except for Iran, which has lately signaled its serious will to become a regional space power, talking to the OIC (the Organization of the Islamic Conference) about designing and placing satellites for Muslim countries, either collectively or individually, we see lots of interest and some movement on the space technology front but little homegrown effort.

Contrast that with India, which has launched some 30 satellites, sometimes several at once, like it did two weeks ago when it delivered 5 satellites, including the Algerian Alsat-2 and the Indian Studsat, which was built by students of engineering colleges from Bangalore and Hyderabad… India is indeed a full-fledged space power, with a suite of high-resolution remote sensing satellites as well as others of various applications. India also, one may recall, sent a spacecraft to the moon, Chandrayaan-1, and found water there, probably the first real confirmation of that. And if this all is not enough, ISRO has announced its intention to develop a manned space program within the next several years…

Clearly this is a very broad topic, and attempting to cover the Arab and Muslim worlds in a short piece is practically impossible – I am guaranteed to have left out one important item or another. Please do fill in the missed spots…

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Eco-Islam and a "green Imam" in Tanzania

I have posted earlier about several movements that are using religion (in this case - Islam) to teach and practice environmentalism. For example, check out this post from a few months ago: Green Muslims. Now PRI has a story about an island off the eastern coast of Africa, where its inhabitants are using Islam to foster better environmental habits. I think a green movement within Islam has a real potential of taking off, and apart from a good PR move, it may also have a good, positive impact on the climate. But there is one thing I found fascinating in this story: The locals on the island were suspicious when the environmental message was seen as coming from the "west". They suspected a hidden agenda associated with it. However, when it was reframed as something already in the Qur'an, then the support went up. Well, this is something we worry about scientific concepts as well - especially for something like biological evolution. When Muslim scholars accept evolution, they often appropriate the concept and either assign it to medieval Muslim scholars of the 12th and 13th centuries or find supporting verses in the Qur'an. While there are problems with these approaches, perhaps another way would be to highlight the works of Muslim evolutionary biologists & paleontologists, as well as pointing to important evolutionary discoveries on the territories belonging to Muslim countries - such as the recently discovered primate fossil from Saudi Arabia.

In any case, listen to the PRI story here (it is about 5 min long):

Green is the color commonly associated with Islam and some scholars say the Koran also commands Muslims to be green in the modern environmental sense. In East Africa, a development project using Islamic ethics has taught locals the Koranic imperatives of conserving natural resources. Some say eco-Islam has taken root. From Pemba Island in Tanzania, Matthew Brunwasser reports. 

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Dancing Soul - A trippy Sunday, courtesy of Werner Herzog

Usually there are sappy scenes when movies depict departing souls (Raiders of the Last Ark being an exception). So here is Werner Herzog's take on it in The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Calls - New Orleans. If you like Herzog, you'll love the idiosyncrasies in the movie. And Nicholas Cage is at his weird best (in fact, I was reminded of the dancing soul scene in an interesting Slate article on Nicholas Cage's movie choices). But if you like non-fiction Herzog, then definitely check out the wonderful Encounters at the End of the World (see an earlier post here).

Here is a short scene involving a dancing soul from The Bad Lieutenant (warning: this clip contains profanity/crude language, violence, and drug-use):


See Roger Ebert's review here.

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Sayyid Qutb liked "Gone with the Wind"?

Here is a plug for a new Sayyid Qutb biography by John Calvert: Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism. I had a chance to meet John when I visited Creighton University couple of years ago. While I was there, he gave a talk about Qutb's days in Greeley, Colorado in the 1940's. First of all, the topic was fascinating. But what stuck out for me was the way John gave the talk: It was like a story-telling session as he created for us, in great detail, the Greeley that Qutb must have seen and his (Qutb's) reaction to it. If that talk is any indication, this book will be a fascinating read. By the way, one of John's earlier works provided the inspiration for a musical performed in Denver - and I think the title was "Qutb in Jahiliyya" (I have to confirm the title).

In any case, here is a review for the book from this week's Economist:

Pre-eminently among the pioneers of 20th-century Islamism, Sayyid Qutb has come to be seen as the evil genius who inspired today’s global jihad. As John Calvert argues in a persuasive new biography, Qutb’s reputation is not entirely undeserved, but it does less than justice to a complex and enigmatic figure.

One of the challenges any biographer faces is to explain Qutb’s evolution from romantic nationalist to mainstream Islamist, and finally to ardent revolutionary. Mr Calvert’s answer is to place his subject firmly on Egyptian soil. Like countless others in the years that followed the first world war, Qutb was a child of rural Egypt who migrated to Cairo as a young man to join the swelling ranks of the effendiyya, the new urban educated class. An intense, proud, rather melancholy man, he worked as a civil servant. In his spare time he struggled to establish himself as a writer of poetry, fiction and literary criticism.

In this early phase Qutb, a Muslim who had come under the spell of Sufism, subscribed to the essentially secular nationalism of the day, the focus of which was opposition to British rule in Egypt and to Zionist colonisation in Palestine. But by the late 1940s, disillusioned with the failings of the nationalist parties, he had become an Islamist and—as exemplified in his first important book, “Social Justice in Islam”—an Islamist of originality and power.

And here is the bit about Qutb's experience in America:

Shortly after finishing the manuscript, Qutb set off for the United States on a visit that was to last almost two years. The trip affected him deeply. Although he was impressed by America’s material accomplishments (and confessed to liking “Gone with the Wind”), he felt an abiding contempt for the materialism, racism and sexual promiscuity of what he saw as a debased Western culture. Was the encounter with America, as some have argued, the turning-point in Qutb’s radicalisation? Did the sight of scantily-clad women on the dance floors of Greeley, Colorado, turn the sexually repressed Egyptian into an Islamist zealot? Mr Calvert doubts it; the visit, he believes, confirmed the radical turn in Qutb’s thinking, rather than inspiring it.

Qutb returned to Egypt and was imprisoned, tortured, and eventually hanged by Nasser. But it is in the prison that he wrote his influential book:

 Imprisonment and torture turned him into an impassioned and embittered revolutionary. His book “Milestones”, written in prison to chart a future course for his crushed and demoralised movement, became an internationally influential manifesto of the Islamic revolution—not least because in 1966, two years after it was published, Qutb was hanged for treason, becoming a martyr for the cause.

Part of the originality of “Milestones” was Qutb’s use of the term jahiliyya to depict the abject condition of the Muslim world. Literally meaning ignorance, the term was originally used to describe the benighted condition of Arabia prior to the advent of Islam. But Qutb used it to condemn Muslim governments and societies which, in his eyes, had been corrupted by Western culture and secularism to the point where they had abandoned Islam. 

But Qutb's character is more complex and it seems that John has been able to bring this out in his book:

 Mr Calvert does not disguise the crudely Manichean character of Qutb’s worldview. He believed in an all-out global struggle between a noble vanguard of true Muslims and the massed ranks of jahiliyya. He depicted Islam’s external enemies as an insidious alliance of “Crusaders and Jews”—the same phrase that is used by al-Qaeda and the global jihadists of today.

But he was not, as has been suggested, an “Islamo-fascist” or an advocate of indiscriminate violence. Qutb opposed the killing of innocents and would have been appalled by what his followers, from the Egyptian radicals of the 1970s and 1980s to the current jihadist groups, have carried out in his name. This rich and carefully researched biography sets Qutb for the first time in his Egyptian context, rescuing him from caricature without whitewashing his radicalism. It is no small achievement.

Looks great. Read the full review here.

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Galileo's middle finger rises again in Florence

Galileo's bits and pieces (okay only bits) are on display at a newly renovated history of science museum in Florence. I had posted on this last November (see Galileo's fingers to be reunited!). Here is some of the fascinating history behind the way his body parts got to where they did - and be treated as "relics":

Now a particularly enduring Catholic practice is on prominent display in, of all places, Florence’s history of science museum, recently renovated and renamed to honor Galileo: Modern-day supporters of the famous heretic are exhibiting newly recovered bits of his body — three fingers and a gnarly molar sliced from his corpse nearly a century after he died — as if they were the relics of an actual saint.  

... 

The scientist’s troubles did not end with his death in 1642.

Nearly a century later, in 1737, members of Florence’s cultural and scientific elite unearthed the scientist’s remains in a peculiar Masonic rite. Freemasonry was growing as a counterweight to church power in those years and even today looms large in the Italian popular imagination as an anticlerical force.As a heretic he could not be given a proper church burial. But for years after his death, his followers in the circle of the grand dukes of Tuscany pushed to give him an honorable resting place.

According to a notary who recorded the strange proceedings, the historian and naturalist Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti used a knife to slice off several fingers, a tooth and a vertebra from Galileo’s body as souvenirs but refrained, it appears, from taking his brain. The scientist was then reburied in a ceremony, “symmetrical to a beatification,” said Mr. Galluzzi.

After taking their macabre souvenirs, the group placed Galileo’s remains in an elegant marble tomb in Florence’s Santa Croce church, a pointed statement from Tuscany’s powers that they were outside the Vatican’s control. The church has long been a shrine to humanism as much as to religion, and Galileo’s permanent neighbors include Michelangelo, Machiavelli and Rossini.

Galileo’s vertebra wound up at the University of Padua, famous for its medical school, while his middle finger wound up in the collection that formed the basis for the Galileo Museum. But the thumb, index finger and tooth disappeared in 1905, only to re-emerge last October, in an auction of reliquaries in Florence.

Alberto Bruschi, a Florence collector, bought what turned out to be Galileo’s digits and tooth at the urging of his daughter Candida, who collects reliquaries. She also happened to be writing her senior thesis on Galileo’s tomb.

After she observed that the figure on top of the reliquary resembled Galileo, the family called an expert who contacted Mr. Galluzzi, and the match was made.

A spokeswoman for the Pandolfini auction house, which sold the reliquaries, said it could not reveal their provenance but said it had no idea they were Galileo’s.

Mr. Bruschi credits providence with the find. “More than by chance, things are also helped along a bit by the souls of the dead,” he said in a telephone interview. “I think they could not have wound up in better hands.”

(A dentist who examined the tooth for the museum said it showed signs of gastric reflux and indicated that Galileo ground his teeth in his sleep.)

But although the relics may be the museum’s sexiest draw, they are a small part of the museum, which reopened last month after a high-tech renovation that transformed it into one of Italy’s best boutique collections, a veritable curiosity cabinet of beautifully wrought scientific instruments.

Read the full article here.

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Film Autopsy (Review) of Inception

Go see it! And see it on the big screen - (even IMAX - if you have the option). See the trailer for the film here.

Inception is a visual treat with a challenging plot line. I wish it was half-an-hour shorter with some reduced chases and gunfights. But then again, Christopher Nolan was making a summer blockbuster, and it would have been hard for him to convince the studios to shell $200 million for a movie about dream invasions.

Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the film. What I say will not exactly be a plot-spoiler, but it does address the theme of the film. So if you don't want to know any thing more about the film, avoid the next few lines (you can listen to the spoiler-free autopsy below). [for more reviews, see our Film Autopsy Blog]

So what is this movie about? When I saw the film the first time, I was caught up in the complex layering of dreams. I was struck by the fact that Nolan, who is amazing at creating atmosphere, did not take much advantage of surrealism afforded by the world of dreams. So I was initially disappointed to see no references to Dali (it would have been so cool to see a random molten clock on the beach...) or to Luis Bunuel, etc. But thinking about the movie afterwards, and after seeing it the second time, it is quite clear that Inception is not really about dreams. Yes, dreams serve as a premise - but that's about it.

If it's not really about dreams - then what is it about? I think it is movies themselves - the art of making films and the experience of watching them as individuals. As Kevin Anderson puts it nicely in our No-glove autopsy of Inception, when we go to a movie, we share a collected dream, but the experience and meaning of the dream is often shaped by our own past experiences and prejudices that we bring to the film. We discuss more on these themes in the two autopsies below.

My appreciation of the film grew enormously after my second viewing. Despite its complex plot, I think the movie is very consistent with the world it creates. I also love the music. The characters, like in other Nolan films, are quite a bit wound-up - and they could have used a bit more sense of humor - especially with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ellen Page at Nolan's disposal (they do share a splendidly sweet moment - but it appeared to me to have been improvised and likely not in the script. You'll know when you see the scene). But then again, Nolan seems to be fascinated by the dark side of human nature - ala Stanley Kubrick - but he is not there yet. This may not be a perfect film, but this is still a fantastic film that reaffirms the magic of big-screen cinema.

Kevin Anderson and I had two autopsies for Inception: One with spoilers and one without. So first, here is the regular autopsy (spoiler-free review) of Inception:


And here is the No-glove autopsy (with spoilers) of Inception:


Of course, you can find autopsies of other recent films at the Film Autopsy Blog.

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