What the readers say
Some
more readers’ reactions to articles on Diabolic Digest.
July 2008
I just read your two most recent blog entries on Comment is Free – the one about eating pork and the
other about Sana Hasan – and I’m writing
to congratulate you. Thank you
M Eltahawy
Journalist and commentator
New York, USA
July 2008
Food for thought
I read your article (Egypt’s popuflation problem) in today’s Guardian, and I
feel compelled to comment and point you in the direction of further
reading. While I would normally never bother
to comment, this is an issue that I have recently been reading about, so I feel
it may be beneficial (that and we share the same name, so somehow this inspired
me even more).
Population is not the cause of hunger in
Egypt. Egypt has the ability to sustain
a far larger population than it currently does.
The reasons that Egypt is a net importer of food, particularly grains,
has more to do with food politics and US food policies than Egypt’s production
capabilities.
For further reading on this, I would point you
to a very good book on the modern history of Egypt: Rule of experts: Egypt, techno-politics, and modernity by Timothy Mitchell
(Professor of Politics at NYU).
Pages 212-221 address this issue
very well. To quote:
“. . . why did the country have to import ever increasing amounts of
food? The answer is to be found by
looking at the kinds of food being eaten, and who got to eat it.” (p 213). To sort of
summarise what Mitchell is getting at – wealthy people ate more fruits and meat
(which requires large amounts of grain to produce) while poorer people went
hungry. On top of this, land use was
switched from food-grains to high-value crops (fruit, grains-for-meat and cotton),
exacerbating the problem. Following a
process of land dispossession, the few who owned land wanted to make money and
so it was only logical for them to produce these high-value crops. He gives quite a bit of detail, showing how the
process happened and the role of the US government (through USAID) and the
Egyptian governments policies. It is very eye-opening.
K Kadir
June 2008
Reflections on Morocco
I just read the
three pieces on your blog detailing your visit to Morocco
and couldn't resist commenting on them (à la CiF....I’m too used to reading you on there).
“However, during our stay [in Agadir] we encountered one ugly incident of discrimination.
........The waiter told me that I had to go inside the bar if I wanted to
consume alcohol, but Katleen and all the other visibly
European people were permitted to drink outside.”
Just to put you
straight on this. According to the law here, it is TOTALLY ILLEGAL for Muslims –
even from other countries – to drink alcohol. End of.
Also according to
the law, non-Muslims may only drink alcohol INSIDE, out of public view – the
drinking of alcohol in public (by those who have the right to drink it) is NOT
permitted – fair enough, in my view.
What you saw was
just ‘Moroccan law’ in action – as long as someone looks ‘non-Muslim’ (i.e.
white), then no one is going to bother too much, tho'
that is only where they are used to white tourists, in big cities. Drinking in
public elsewhere (unless on a raised, separate, private terrace) may cause the
police to suggest that it isn’t a good idea – even for a tourist, and during
Ramadan even those places which have a special dispensation to serve alcohol
(ONLY to non-Muslims and only in private – are very few and far between outside
of Marrakech and Agadir) erect screens around their
raised terraces.
So what you met was ‘discrimination’,
but it was just so that you could ‘break the law’ without the police hassling
you (and, more important for him, the bar owner – cash would be involved if the
police start hassling him for serving Muslims).
Go into any bar in
Morocco (and there are many, even in traditional areas, if one knows where to
look) and it will be packed with locals drinking alcohol, including policemen
in uniform. Gendarmarie tend to drink in plain
clothes!
And yes, the ‘discrimination’
is based solely on skin colour. I have heard of Hindu British Asians also not being
allowed to drink alcohol where the public can see them – it just draws
attention, especially from the police, and that can be expensive. I would
imagine that the other bar owner has a ‘different arrangement’ with his local
coppers, and his neighbours (the police are very laissez-faire,
you can get away with most anything if no-one complains about it).
“We did some mosque-hopping, but, since Katleen was not allowed into any of them, it became a
little tedious.”
The authorities say
this is an old French law, but when I was India, I couldn’t enter any mosques
there, and was told that was because of an old English law! Is it an Islamic
thing (and in that case, how come anyone can enter the Casablanca Hassan II mosque – outside of prayer times?). I have worshipped
in a Mosque – with some Muslim friends. I was impressed and not a little moved.
“With the growing bitterness of the
Israeli-Arab conflict, gradual immigration to Israel continued, until the
number of Jews dwindled to an estimated 5-8,000 today.”
Interestingly
enough, in the end the Israeli government had to offer financial inducements to
get Moroccan Jews to go there (I have been told: US$10,000, a house, and a
guaranteed job). Many families sent part of the family to Israel and part of
the family stayed here – there are lots of franchises of Israeli businesses
here and other commercial links.
And the poor Jews
left, so the Jewish community which remains is, in the main, very well off (and
very well integrated, until it comes to inter-marriage!).
But you sound as
though you enjoyed yourselves (few don’t as it is a fascinating country).
A Owen
Casablanca,
Morocco
June 2008
Manhattan’s clash of civilisations
Appreciate your new comment today (The clash inside)
a lot!
I like the way you sort of gently busted the leftish types who refer to a coherent ‘West’.
For me, naive as this may seem, there isn’t
seriously an east or a west, it's all one world.
Unless, of course, you're talking about North
America! My god, those people in San Francisco, Vancouver and Seattle are
incomprehensible. I’m totally prejudiced toward the Eastern part of North
America.... And as for the Upper West Side of **Manhattan** -- that’s the real
clash as far as I’m concerned, living as I do on the UES.
T Quan
New York, UK
June 2008
Interpreting the signs
Liked your New York article. I am in Syria right now – few signs
seen here.
An extreme manifestation of the US’s
litigation-obsessed culture is one of two reasons I have always seen as the
root of the United States dumbed down nature of
signage. If you put signs posting what you can and cannot do then you use that
in a court to relieve you of some responsibilities. This seems to be a major
source of signage.
Also, if you get sued for selling hot coffees,
then you really do not have to cool its temperature upon serving,
just put a disclaimer on the packaging. Although media went crazy reporting
what the woman got in the settlement, in fact, as I read once, she received
very little of the largess; the vast majority went to lawyers fees.
There is a simple correlation between making
litigation and actual lawmaking merely by the fact that most politicians are
also lawyers by training. The average American often lists the law profession
as the least trusted occupation in the country, the other are politicians. One
guards the importance of the other in the mechanisms of society.
When someone introduces me to a friend who is a
lawyer, I instantly put them in the position of having to prove that they are a
decent person, not that I initially assume they are from the start. At the same
time, if Americans have a problem they go running to lawyers immediately, part
of that is because lawyers operate on a commission basis and there is little
penalty for someone to take a case to court. It is a win-win situation.
The second is that I believe most advertising
is positioned to meet the widest range of audiences, thus dumbed
down. The population is based on immigration and that has historically been
especially true during the early industrial age. Vast numbers of people with
limited and varied education, not to mention a limited understanding of
English, during the point when advertising itself expanded through improved
media forms. It was a pattern established early on and has been institutionalised
in the use of brand advertising.
However, the modern age of internet, cable
television and improvements in mailing methods, among others, have spawned all
sorts of new ways to reach the consumer; they have also helped advertising
agencies pinpoint market segments in ways previously not possible. So in recent
years, there seems to be a movement to make some forms of brand advertising
more sophisticated.
If I can draw a parallel to Egypt, without
market segmentation, advertising remains one-step thinking pitches.
Nonetheless, Egypt is now experiencing rapid development of a consumer-based
economy at the same time new media forms are becoming available. As an example,
I expect that pitches to AUC graduates will become more common and the method
of salesmanship done in a way that might not be understood by other segments of
society.
As far as signage, nothing beats the
proliferation used on the London Underground. They have so many, the system uses different colours to prioritize messages; e.g. green
signs mean aides, while yellow are cautionary. Again, this is partly done
because of the number of immigrants making use of the service. International
airports also apply similar systems, see Schipol for a system that borders on genius.
J Allen
May 2008
I read your articles regularly and specifically
like your views secularism and religion.
M Awad
Toronto, Canada
April 2008
Nova Belgica
Just read your NY article.
...Did you know that it was a Belgian who
acquired Manhattan, while New York was still named "Nova Belgica"?
It's an anecdote I came across, a few months
ago. I think very few Belgians are aware of this.
Ain’t that som’thing...!
http://www.belgeoblog.be/?s=nova+belgica
A Bevers
Grimbergen, Belgium
April 2008
Finding Arab authors
Just my little contribution to your search for
Arab authors in English. :)
Evelyn Accad. She is – or used to be – a teacher
of comparative literature, French, African and Middle-Eastern studies, she is a
writer, a poet and a musician. University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. She
focuses mainly on women’s rights in the Middle-East, I remember one book she
wrote – The Excised – that changed the way I think about girls and women, it affected
me deeply and I think helped shape my personality and my attitude towards women
in general.
Oh, and she’s my father’s cousin, so :)
I read a few of her books, and met her a few
times when she was visiting Egypt to do research. I am sure you will find a lot
in common, put my name in as a reference if you need it.
N Accad
Toronto, Canada
April 2008
Prophets and miracles
It amazes me how people still believe that
religion as described in the ‘holy’ books is real. I’m talking about the
miracles and all the things we are supposed to just believe without being
allowed to examine.
The virgin birth, wine from water, 5000 people
fed from three fish...etc. The fact that Muhammad could not read or write, yet
somehow came up with all those ideas, raising the dead is one of my favourites,
I love zombies. But by far the most ridiculous one is Moses talking to God, while
God pretended to be a burning bush.
The guy wanders in the desert for who knows how
long and then starts hearing and seeing things. I don't know about you, but I
want some of whatever he was smoking. If someone did this today, we’d call it hallucinations,
but just because the guy lived a few thousand years ago, we make him a prophet.
I don't think the world is ready for your views
yet Khaled, seriously, the majority of the people in
this world view Islam and Muhammad as either the incarnation of God, or the
incarnation of the Devil. The third view, people who try to find hard
historical facts are very few, and this is a major problem that can be solved
only by education.
Thank you for writing that one, it give
me some hope that there is still intelligence on earth.
P.S. the backlash was hard on the Guardian, they had to close the comments :))
N Accad
Toronto, Canada
April 2008
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