Islamist Persecution of Non-Muslims . . .

Benedict Rogers

Thomas More Institute

Since Ayaan Hirsi Ali's February report in Newsweek about Islamism's global war on Christians, I've noticed that this issue is getting more press. Just two days ago, I read in the International Herald Tribune of "Indonesia's Rising Religious Intolerance," an op-ed piece by Benedict Rogers (May 21, 2012) that can be found online at the New York Times site. The article is about broader Islamist mistreatment of minorities, but it cites persecution of Christians as part of this larger pattern, a problem that Mr. Rogers describes from his recent visit to Indonesia:

[On] Sunday, I joined a small church in Bekasi, a suburb of Jakarta, for a service, but found the street blocked by a noisy, angry mob and a few police.

The church, known as HKBP Filadelfia, was forced to close a few years ago, even though the local courts had given permission to open. The local mayor, under pressure from Islamists, has declared a "zero church" policy in his area. For the past two months, the congregation has been blocked from worshiping in the street outside their building, and the atmosphere has grown increasingly tense.

When I was there, I felt it could have erupted into violence at any moment. The radicals in control of the loudspeaker shouted "Christians, get out," and "anyone not wearing a jilbab (headscarf), catch them, hunt them down" . . . . Another church, GKI Yasmin in Bogor, an hour from Jakarta, has approval from the Supreme Court to open, but the local mayor, again under pressure from Islamists, refuses to allow it. A district mayor is in defiance of the Supreme Court, and no one says a word . . . . In Aceh, 17 churches were forced to close.

I met other church pastors who talked about their churches being closed, and a woman, the Rev. Luspida, who was beaten while one of her congregation was knifed. "We have no religious freedom here anymore," she told me. "We need to give a message to the president. He cannot say the situation is good here. We need to remind him our situation is very critical, and he should do something for the future of Indonesia. Support from outside is very important to pressure the president."

Those of us who are keeping track of radical Islam's fortunes in various parts of the world have long noticed and commented upon this pattern of Islamist intimidation of religious minorities, especially with respect to Christians, for the Islamists seem to have particular animus against Christianity, perhaps because the West is the old enemy that resisted successfully for so long and even turned back the spread of Islam into Europe during Medieval and Early Modern times, a humiliation exacerbated by the West's colonization of Muslim countries in the later Modern period.

Postcolonial guilt has perhaps previously blunted Western criticism of radical Islam, but a new generation has grown up without a sense of that guilt, and people are talking . . .

NYT on China's 'Princeling' Network

Princeling Network?

Despite my recent blog entry on China's so-called 'Princelings,' in which I side with that disinterested venture capitalist in Shanghai, Mr. Eric X. Li, who assures us that the 'Princelings' are a myth, I see from this weekend's International Herald Tribune that David Barboza and Sharon LaFraniere are perpetuating the myth: "'Princelings' in China Use Family Ties to Gain Riches," which can be read online at the New York Times site. These two 'reporters' tell us:

[E]vidence is mounting that the relatives of . . . current and former senior officials have also amassed vast wealth, often playing central roles in businesses closely entwined with the state, including those involved in finance, energy, domestic security, telecommunications and entertainment. Many of these so-called princelings also serve as middlemen to a host of global companies and wealthy tycoons eager to do business in China.

Don't Mr. Barboza and Ms. LaFraniere know that the redoubtable Mr. Eric X. Li has stated that these "assumptions are disconnected from reality and need to be debunked"? Apparently not, for they cite him nowhere despite quoting his nemesis, Minxin Pei, whose disinterestedness I've already challenged in my blog entry on the so-called 'Princelings.' Here's what they quote from Mr. Pei:

"Whenever there is something profitable that emerges in the economy, they'll be at the front of the queue," said Minxin Pei, an expert on China's leadership and professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California. "They've gotten into private equity, state-owned enterprises, natural resources -- you name it."

But Mr. Eric X. Li has already shown that these so-called 'Princelings' are experts in the positions they hold, that they've worked hard for the money -- so hard for the money -- and you better treat them right!

Critical Thinking in China

Lei Feng
CCP Hero

Wikipedia

I don't know much about China despite living so close to that enormous country that would border a united Korea if the North and South ever join again, but I do realize how important it is, so I try to keep up with developments over there. Some readers may recall that I even included China in my paper on the necessity for a culture of discussion in East Asia and that I noted the possibility for the rise of critical thinking there, citing the public's skeptical response to the Chinese government's official version of a terrible accident on one of the nation's high-speed railways.

My faith in the Chinese people's potential for critical thought has not been misplaced, for one of the Communist Party's propaganda heros, Lei Feng, is currently being widely ridiculed on the internet in China, according to Andrew Jacobs, "Poking holes in the tale of a propaganda hero" (International Herald Tribune, March 5, 2012):

[T]he Internet has given rise to a legion of Lei Feng deniers who have been merrily poking holes in his story. Using simple math, they have questioned how a poor orphan living on a tiny army stipend could donate so much money to the needy or how he collected 150 kilograms, or about 330 pounds, of cow dung on a single day during Chinese New Year.

Others have questioned the flawless script of his diary and wondered how it is that there are hundreds of photographs recording his every good deed. Liu Yi, a designer in Shanghai, pointed out the absurdity of one famous image that shows Lei Feng in bed reading Mao's collected works by flashlight. In the photo, he notes, the flashlight is off but the room is fully illuminated. "And there just happened to be a photojournalist passing by to capture the moment," he wrote. (page 3, columns c-f)

Unfortunately, many of these examples of critical thinking still available for others to read online might soon become less prevalent, for beginning March 16, 2012, the Chinese government will require real-name registration on the internet, and the anonymous critiques will end, which may force a lot of individuals to fall silent. Moreover, any online post considered 'detrimental' to national interests, always rather vaguely defined, will have to be deleted within five minutes!

Oddly, I haven't yet managed to locate a copy of this critical article on the internet . . .

UPDATE: It's now online.

Step Aside, Girls' Generation, Here's Me N Ma Girls!

Me N Ma Girls

New York Times

K-Pop gets all the attention these days, but other Asian bands are pushing their way into the spotlight. My K-Pop fanatic daughter and I read an unsigned International Tribune Herald article whose online NYT version is "Myanmar's First Girl Band Pushes Limits of Censors, and Parents" (January 4, 2012) and which informs us of the band Me N Ma Girls (a pun on "Myanmar girls"):

The band is a creation of Nicole May, an Australian dancer who came to Myanmar three years ago and handpicked five women from 120 candidates who responded to an ad on the radio and in newspapers . . .

Ms. May, who is a graphic designer by profession, chose the band members using criteria atypical for the doll-like girl bands common across Asia. Ms. May said she wanted attitude and charisma.

"I wanted five girls who had energy and magnetic attraction," Ms. May said.

All five of the members of Me N Ma Girls have college degrees, in the fields of chemistry, zoology, mathematics, Russian and computer science. The band members, while not overly cerebral, are outspoken and confident.

My daughter gaped at reading of their educational level.

The band was first known the Tiger Girls, but the choice of band members created a rift between Ms. May and her Burmese co-manager, Moe Kyaw, who initially financed the Tiger Girls and who was looking for a more South Korean look: light-skinned with the willowy bodies of store-window mannequins.

My daughter, who loves Girls' Generation, exclaimed, "That describes Girls' Generation! In one video, they even were mannequins!"

"I was skeptical," Mr. Moe Kyaw said in response to e-mailed questions. "If you were to ask me if I thought they had the looks for a successful girl band, I would say no."

Mr. Moe Kyaw said he initially relented because he thought that the girls were talented and that looks were not everything. "This was during the days of Susan Boyle," he said.

But he changed his mind. A year ago, Mr. Moe Kyaw and Ms. May parted ways. The girls followed Ms. May and changed their name to Me N Ma Girls.

Growing name recognition in the music industry in Myanmar -- the girls have been featured in magazine spreads and profiles in the Burmese media -- has yet to translate to financial success.

That may be about to change, now that the band has made front page of the International Herald Tribune, the version of the article that my daughter and I read ("Pop singers onstage, and deferential daughters at home," January 5, 2012).

I was curious and managed to find this video on You Tube: "Chate Lite Tot." They do have energy and magnetism, and a more spontaneous style than the highly synchronized K-Pop bands, though the Me N Ma Girls are also obviously well-practiced in choreographics.

After watching that one video, I noticed that the online article has a couple of links itself. Here are "Festival" and "Liar!" Or just go to their Vimeo site, which is under their manager's name, Nicole May.

Will they make it big? We'll see, but since Myanmar seems to be opening up to the world these days, their window of opportunity may have opened.

UPDATE: Here's a pseudonymously written Guardian article from a year ago, when the group was still the Tiger Girls, and it has a photo of Nicole May with the band.

My Own Private Speakeasy . . .

Too Much Lip!

Photo by Horacio Salinas

(Image from New York Times)

Last Saturday, I took a bike ride along the Jungnang River, which doesn't surprise long-time readers, but a few might be mildly taken aback to hear that I biked through inclement weather, getting fairly well soaked by the time that I'd reached the 15-kilometer spot where beer on tap did not await to slake my thirst. The usual proprietors were nowhere to be seen under the bridge where the overhead subway runs an oxymoronic course. I therefore pedaled another hundred meters upstream to the enormous highway bridge, where I found vendors selling wretched Cass in a can. I satisfied myself with that and and sat down on a bench under the shelter of that great bridge to read my copy of the International Herald Tribune.

I came across an interesting article on linguistics by Guy Deutscher, "Does Your Language Shape How You Think?" (August 26, 2010, online NYT version), which informs us that even though Benjamin Lee Whorf was wrong to emphasize the deterministic effect of one's mother tongue, language nevertheless strongly influences how we think, a fact perhaps indisputable but at times quite astonishing:

[A] remote Australian aboriginal tongue, Guugu Yimithirr, from north Queensland, turned up, and with it came the astounding realization that not all languages conform to what we have always taken as simply "natural." In fact, Guugu Yimithirr doesn't make any use of egocentric coordinates at all. The anthropologist John Haviland and later the linguist Stephen Levinson have shown that Guugu Yimithirr does not use words like "left" or "right," "in front of" or "behind," to describe the position of objects. Whenever we would use the egocentric system, the Guugu Yimithirr rely on cardinal directions. If they want you to move over on the car seat to make room, they'll say "move a bit to the east." To tell you where exactly they left something in your house, they'll say, "I left it on the southern edge of the western table." Or they would warn you to "look out for that big ant just north of your foot." Even when shown a film on television, they gave descriptions of it based on the orientation of the screen. If the television was facing north, and a man on the screen was approaching, they said that he was "coming northward."

The astonishment increases to 'astoundment' in some of the further examples, but I'll leave the revelation of those to the article itself, for curious readers willing to dig deeper. I will note a 'gendered' point about language, though, for its interest to translators:

Languages like Spanish, French, German and Russian not only oblige you to think about the sex of friends and neighbors, but they also assign a male or female gender to a whole range of inanimate objects quite at whim. What, for instance, is particularly feminine about a Frenchman’s beard (la barbe)? Why is Russian water a she, and why does she become a he once you have dipped a tea bag into her? Mark Twain famously lamented such erratic genders as female turnips and neuter maidens in his rant "The Awful German Language." But whereas he claimed that there was something particularly perverse about the German gender system, it is in fact English that is unusual, at least among European languages, in not treating turnips and tea cups as masculine or feminine. Languages that treat an inanimate object as a he or a she force their speakers to talk about such an object as if it were a man or a woman. And as anyone whose mother tongue has a gender system will tell you, once the habit has taken hold, it is all but impossible to shake off. When I speak English, I may say about a bed that "it" is too soft, but as a native Hebrew speaker, I actually feel "she" is too soft. "She" stays feminine all the way from the lungs up to the glottis and is neutered only when she reaches the tip of the tongue.

With a bit of reflection, one can see how this would play havoc in translating from a strongly gendered language into English, or vice-versa. Suppose the meaning of a foreign-language text depended upon gendered wordplays. How would one translate that into English? Or take an English text that depended upon keeping some gender in abeyance until a moment of epiphany? How might one render that in a highly gendered language?

Well, those are my special problems. You need not worry about such things -- unless you're also a translator or a translator's partner. Just read, and enjoy, the article itself . . . and speak easy.

Nearly an 'It Boy'

Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Subway Station

On a railway crossing near here...

(Image from Wikipedia)

Martin Buber wrote of I and Thou. Yesterday afternoon, I nearly became an 'it'.

I was riding the 273 Bus from Kyung Hee University at around 3:15, on my way to pick up my son, En-Uk, from his piano lesson, and the driver proved himself one of those 'Drivers from Hell' -- as my kids and I like to call them.

In short, a typical bus driver in Seoul -- the Polar Express engineer has nothing on these Korean Big City Drivers!

Yet . . . I no longer really notice the abrupt stops, the sudden accelerations, the unpredictable lane changes. I just brace myself, knee against the seat in front of me, and read my International Herald Tribune, experienced enough in my Han-Kookily urbanized life to ignore my surroundings and still avoid being thrown unceremoniously from my seat.

At some point, however, I became aware that we were backing up . . . s l o w l y. I looked up from my paper just as the bus's retrograde motion halted. A uniformed man was rushing across an open space toward the front of my bus, his head twisting quickly first right, then left, as he ran. Another man, also in uniform, stood beside the bus, to my right, frantically waving a red flashlight and ordering traffic behind the bus to back up.

At that moment, my eyes focused on a railway crossing's half-barrier bar, which was leaning fixed against the bus's front door. Red lights were flashing, bells were clanging, and the bus's engine portion was thrust across the subway tracks.

I'll say this for the driver -- he didn't abandon his passengers (unlike the subway train driver in the Daegu Subway Fire) but sat firmly in his seat and waited for the cars behind to back up, upon which, he did the same. Our bus had just slipped back behind the half-barrier bar, allowing it to descend completely, as the train rushed past.

My newspaper forgotten, neglected on my lap, I sat there staring at the driver's reflection in his rearview mirror, wondering if he had tried to beat the train, or if the half-barrier, flashing lights, and clanging bell had all simultaneously, if temporarily, malfunctioned.

The former seemed more likely, for after the train had safely passed, then another had rushed in the opposite direction, the bus lunged forward as the 'Driver from Hell' hurried on to meet what I took to be his urgent, pressing, schedule . . . having, apparently, learned absolutely nothing from his close encounter with nothingness.

I rode home thinking of Malcolm Pollack's own close encounter with mortality and had a cold beer to celebrate my continued subjectivity...