"You cannot pay Rs 12,000 for a meal for two people in a five-star hotel and come out and throw Rs 10 to a boy competing with a dog for the garbage and think you have done your duty"
- Ashis Nandy
- Ashis Nandy
The serious , the satirical & the somewhere inbetween !
Monday, November 30, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Lolita Syndrome
In Saudi Arabia, a ten year old girl has been married off to an 80-year old man while in Somalia, a man claiming to 117 married a 17 year old (so much for sugar daddy – now we’ve got saccharine grand-dads). Earlier this year, the media hype and intense criticism of a Saudi court’s decision to recognise a marriage of an 8 year old to a 50-something year old, soon led the husband to divorce her. All these men claim the marriages to be Sharia-compliant.
Saudi Human Rights Commission member Ma'touq Al-'Abdallah stated that while the country had not explicitly outlawed marriages with child brides, a report issued in February 2009 by the Saudi Health Ministry concluded that such marriages were detrimental to the minor's emotional and physical health, and harmful to society at large.
Child brides are not isolated to Islamic societies. Often there’s a direct link between poverty and the forced marriages of children, (which usually happen for a sizeable dowry). In some rural societies, girls are married off from the ages of 7 to 11. 16 year olds are considered too old; even though national laws exist which stipulate the legal age for marriage to be 16 or 18, they are contravened by local communities.
Girls who have been married off at such young ages are found to suffer serious psychological and physical effects. Those who bear children at a young age suffer from difficult pregnancies and births, and even death. These girls are also deprived of formal education, limiting their abilities to fend for themselves. They age quicker and die younger (this is a far cry from the romantisisation of death during pregnancy as a matyrdom)
The cases cited above are of extreme and ridiculous age gaps and gain wide criticism in the West – and rightly so - however they serve more as a fuel for the creation of negative perceptions of societies in the developing world. But this begs the question of child and teenage sexuality in the USA and other western / liberal democracies. A study conducted in the US showed that secret, illegal, teenage marriages were on the rise in America since the 1990s. Children are increasingly sexually active at younger ages. Promiscuity has increased the rates of sexually transmitted infections and the easy access to abortion clinics has resulted in some women reaching adulthood having had up to four abortions. Christian right-wingers have argued that sex-education has contributed to the rise in promiscuity of the younger generation.
There is also no shortage of superb role models in the mass media, with ratings for shows like Gossip Girl going through the roof. Sex is seen as just another hobby and something fun, without consequences, without responsibility and with quick fix solutions to problems that may arise.
So in a world where at age 12 you may not ride in an elevator alone but can give consent to have an abortion maybe teenage marriage isn’t such a bad thing afterall.
Saudi Human Rights Commission member Ma'touq Al-'Abdallah stated that while the country had not explicitly outlawed marriages with child brides, a report issued in February 2009 by the Saudi Health Ministry concluded that such marriages were detrimental to the minor's emotional and physical health, and harmful to society at large.
Child brides are not isolated to Islamic societies. Often there’s a direct link between poverty and the forced marriages of children, (which usually happen for a sizeable dowry). In some rural societies, girls are married off from the ages of 7 to 11. 16 year olds are considered too old; even though national laws exist which stipulate the legal age for marriage to be 16 or 18, they are contravened by local communities.
Girls who have been married off at such young ages are found to suffer serious psychological and physical effects. Those who bear children at a young age suffer from difficult pregnancies and births, and even death. These girls are also deprived of formal education, limiting their abilities to fend for themselves. They age quicker and die younger (this is a far cry from the romantisisation of death during pregnancy as a matyrdom)
The cases cited above are of extreme and ridiculous age gaps and gain wide criticism in the West – and rightly so - however they serve more as a fuel for the creation of negative perceptions of societies in the developing world. But this begs the question of child and teenage sexuality in the USA and other western / liberal democracies. A study conducted in the US showed that secret, illegal, teenage marriages were on the rise in America since the 1990s. Children are increasingly sexually active at younger ages. Promiscuity has increased the rates of sexually transmitted infections and the easy access to abortion clinics has resulted in some women reaching adulthood having had up to four abortions. Christian right-wingers have argued that sex-education has contributed to the rise in promiscuity of the younger generation.
There is also no shortage of superb role models in the mass media, with ratings for shows like Gossip Girl going through the roof. Sex is seen as just another hobby and something fun, without consequences, without responsibility and with quick fix solutions to problems that may arise.
So in a world where at age 12 you may not ride in an elevator alone but can give consent to have an abortion maybe teenage marriage isn’t such a bad thing afterall.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Burnt...
I would lay down over a raging fire on your path
so that you may pass by unharmed,
and you my love
would not notice the smell of burning flesh in the air
as you walked over me.
so that you may pass by unharmed,
and you my love
would not notice the smell of burning flesh in the air
as you walked over me.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
The Language Trap
I’ve not really though about the issue before, but after listening to some opinions on the matter and considering the mammoth impact media hype has on humanities perceptions on the whole, I figured this issue deserved further thought.
Even though we have been moved by lyrics and poetry since time began we continue to under estimate the power of language. The revelation of the Quran more than 1400 years ago led to most of the known world submitting to the message it brought as the Arab peninsula was captivated instantly by the lyrical style of God’s word.
Words like ‘war’ as used in the current crisis in the Middle East to denote an equal battle-field an idea that couldn’t be further from the truth. US aid hardly means food for the starving but rather the opening of a pathway into a country to assess assets!
In the past the ‘branding’ of the unknown - read ‘not the west’- and the stigmatisation of such places as uncivilised and barbaric, -in fact not much has changed looking at the US’s campaign to ‘selflessly’ take on the mantle of liberators of the ‘backward’ Muslim nations and more importantly their subjugated and long suffering women.- Led to many believing that the world needed urgently to be rid of these ‘fundamentalists’ and ‘extremists ‘ (interestingly enough know one even remembers these words are English words and are not descriptions for Taliban style dressed Muslim men.)
Even though we have been moved by lyrics and poetry since time began we continue to under estimate the power of language. The revelation of the Quran more than 1400 years ago led to most of the known world submitting to the message it brought as the Arab peninsula was captivated instantly by the lyrical style of God’s word.
Words like ‘war’ as used in the current crisis in the Middle East to denote an equal battle-field an idea that couldn’t be further from the truth. US aid hardly means food for the starving but rather the opening of a pathway into a country to assess assets!
In the past the ‘branding’ of the unknown - read ‘not the west’- and the stigmatisation of such places as uncivilised and barbaric, -in fact not much has changed looking at the US’s campaign to ‘selflessly’ take on the mantle of liberators of the ‘backward’ Muslim nations and more importantly their subjugated and long suffering women.- Led to many believing that the world needed urgently to be rid of these ‘fundamentalists’ and ‘extremists ‘ (interestingly enough know one even remembers these words are English words and are not descriptions for Taliban style dressed Muslim men.)
So as ‘fact finding mission’ actually translates into UN employees on a five star holiday in a ‘developing country, let us take a pact to NOT do a dis-service to the struggle with our language!
Sunday, November 1, 2009
"Love is Reckless"
Love is reckless; not reason.
Reason seeks a profit.
Love comes on strong, consuming herself, unabashed.
Yet, in the midst of suffering,
Love proceeds like a millstone,
hard surfaced and straightforward.
Having died to self-interest,
she risks everything and asks for nothing.
Love gambles away every gift God bestows.
Without cause God gave us Being;
without cause, give it back again.
Gambling yourself away is beyond any religion.
Religion seeks grace and favor,
but those who gamble these away are God's favorites,
for they neither put God to the test
nor knock at the door of gain and loss.
- Mevlana Jelaluddin Balkhi (RUMI)
-- Version by Kabir Helminski
"Love is a Stranger"
Threshold Books, 1993
Reason seeks a profit.
Love comes on strong, consuming herself, unabashed.
Yet, in the midst of suffering,
Love proceeds like a millstone,
hard surfaced and straightforward.
Having died to self-interest,
she risks everything and asks for nothing.
Love gambles away every gift God bestows.
Without cause God gave us Being;
without cause, give it back again.
Gambling yourself away is beyond any religion.
Religion seeks grace and favor,
but those who gamble these away are God's favorites,
for they neither put God to the test
nor knock at the door of gain and loss.
- Mevlana Jelaluddin Balkhi (RUMI)
-- Version by Kabir Helminski
"Love is a Stranger"
Threshold Books, 1993
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