Author: Fahad Mustafa

Where does all the rain go?

Writter by Fahad Mustafa on Posted in Climate Change Tagged ,
Down the drain

At a time when Israel’s mountain and coastal aquifers are severely depleted, the government has put in place what is know as the “Drought Tax”. People in Israel already have to pay for the amount of water they use, however the new drought tax is actually a levy on excessive water use with the apparent aim of encouraging people to save water.

A number of solutions for the present water emergency in Israel have been suggested, such as importing water from Turkey and establishing temporary, movable desalinization plants along the coast. These solutions are very expensive however, are limited in the volume of water they can produce and are only temporary solutions. The most obvious and promising solution is water saving, through informing the public and, more recently, by introducing a heavy drought tax – water consumption fell by 15% this past summer compared to the summer of 2008.

Viennale ’09: Notes and Reviews

Writter by Fahad Mustafa on Posted in Film Tagged

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This is the third Viennale that I have attended, and it’s exciting to see its increasing popularity and appeal. Aside from the surge in ticket sales (apparently 25,000 were sold on the opening day, and I had to queue up for 3 hours to get mine), it is also apparent in the excellent mix of mainstream movies and world cinema that the Viennale brings every year. The festival gives out no awards, hence sparing it the rush of celebrity, media and studio-execs and focusing distinctly on the movies. I am also a big fan of the Gartenbaukino, as its one of the biggest screens in Vienna, making refreshing change from Artis or Haydn. Here are a few reviews:

Films that I watched:

Un Prophéte: Easily the most exciting movie that I have seen at the Viennale. The movie begins as realist prison-drama, but soon grows bigger than its setting into faiytale bildungsroman, stuff of myths and legends. However, the core of the movie is the thrill of watching it’s protagonist-a young French-Arab named Mallik-el-Tjebna-perilous rise to power, with all the odds stacked up against him. Malliks world looks dire as he enters the prison as a small time crook to serve a six year jail sentence, and is soon blackmailed by the Corsican mafia that controls the jail into murdering their rival-another French-Arab named Reyeb. Before he’s killed, Reyeb tells Mallik that the whole point of prison life is to learn something here (Reyeb is present throughout the movie, a sort of Gabriel to Mallik’s prophet) . And learn Mallik does, from reading and writing to negotiating the ,power relations and racial tensions of the prison yard.  He has a treacherous mentor in César, the leader of the Corsicans, and their relationship forms the emotional center of the film as we watch Mallik growing stronger and mature, while César grows more insecure and irrelevant.

The brilliance of the movie lies in its direction and how Audiard manages to imbibe poetry and mysticism in an

‘The Dalits of Europe’

Writter by Fahad Mustafa on Posted in Europe, India Tagged , , , ,

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While reading Pardeep Singh Attri’s account of his experiences as a Dalit activist traveling in Hungary in the brilliant Insight Young Voices blog, I was struck by the similarity of the plight of Hungarian Romas and the Dalits ( regarded as Untouchables) in India. Both groups are victims of deep and persisting discriminations arising from their historical status in society. What struck me even more though was the appropriation of the ideas B. R Ambedkar by the Roma in their struggle for equal rights. Writes Pradeep:

One of the most interesting facts that Derdak Tibor informed me was that his group of Roma activists and community leaders in Hungary derive their inspiration from Babasaheb Ambedkar and Buddhism and trying to inculcate Ambedkarite thoughts in their movement towards equal rights for the Roma community. They have created a support network called Jai Bhim Network, embraced Buddhism and opened an high school in the name of Dr Ambedkar High School for the Roma children in Hungary.

Roma activists find their situation in the otherwise ‘white’ Hungary almost akin to the Dalits of India and therefore they now call their community, ‘the Dalits of Europe’ as the Romas are also found in other European countries too and face the similar prejudices and discrimination every where.

Freddy ‘Mustapha’ Mercury

Writter by Fahad Mustafa on Posted in Music Tagged , ,

Check out Queen’s brilliant, hysterical song  ‘Mustapha’. I could not be sure, but Freddie Mercury is singing in Arabic, Persian and English, mashing names of prophets with ‘As-salam-alalikum’. The song is part of the Queen’s 1978 album Jazz, and they performed it live regularly.

In live performances, Mercury would often sing the opening vocals of “Mustapha” in place of the complex introduction to “Bohemian Rhapsody“, going from “Allah we’ll pray for you” to “Mama, just killed a man…”. However, sometimes the band performed an almost full version of the song from the Crazy Tour in late 1979 to The Game Tour in 1980, with Mercury at the piano. They dropped the second verse and went from the first chorus to the third. Also notable is that the song was often requested by the audience, as can be heard on Live Killers.- Wiki

How cool does this make Freddie Mercury then? Son of Parsee-Indian immigrants, described as Britains first Asian star, singing ‘Allah we pray for you’  in racially charged late 1970s Britain. Sheer Awesomeness.

Obama Love-Fest Continues

Writter by Fahad Mustafa on Posted in Barack Obama, USA Tagged ,

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While I count myself amongst fans of Barack Obama, the Nobel Committee’s decision to award him with the Peace Prize did come as a WTF moment this morning (to lots of people judging by FB news-feed). The Nobel Committee honoured him this morning for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”.

Obama excels at  public diplomacy, and has a cult-like following around the world. No other world leader shares his commitment towards nuclear disarmament and a multilateral world.  However, awarding the Nobel to him with the war in Afghanistan bringing new dead everyday, Guantanamo still open and troops still in Iraq strikes as  pre-mature. Further, he has been active as president for only 10 months. Granted that he has made significant departures in that period, would it not have been more seemly to honour a longer commitment to human-rights and world-peace.

Not that the Nobel Prize is a sign of anything. Gandhi, being amongst the famous non-recipients.

But for now the Obama love-fest continues.

The Economist published yesterday the favourites to win, foremost amongst whom were

Ian Buruma on Enlightenment, Language and Multiculturalism

Writter by Fahad Mustafa on Posted in Europe, Global History, Islam Tagged , , ,

I spent a large part of today watching Prof. Ian Buruma’s brilliant lecture series at Princeton university entitled ‘No Divine Rights: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents’ which I am posting here. Buruma is a scholar of great versatility. His subjects range from a fictional-biography of an Indian cricketer-prince, to works on European and Japanese history. In this lecture series he tackles the relation between state and religion in America, Asia and Europe, in which he makes extremely revelatory connections between religion and state in different societies. All the lectures here are extremely interesting especially for students of global history.

Buruma’s assessment of how elitism, liberalism and democracy interacted with religion in Europe is particularly informative. Throughout the series he is concerned with the changes affecting Europe, which he addresses directly in his last lecture posted here. His views on the changing meaning of the Enlightenment, the role of language in forming identities amongst immigrants and his examination of the kulturkampf between Europe and Islam is deeply informed, as is evident from the range of his examples, and deeply relevant.

Update: Also posting the other two lectures in the series:

The On-going trials and tribulations of an Austrian-American living in Japan

Writter by Fahad Mustafa on Posted in Beyond Nations, Travelogues
(Written originally as an email and adapted slightly for posting here)
Greetings from the east side (of the world). Hope everything is going well over in the Occident, life is rocking over here. I’m loving it here and am seriously contemplating staying for two years. Anyway, there is weird and bizarre shit going on all the time around here, I never quite know what to expect…I figure I should stay the second year so that by that time i can hopefully have some sort of idea of what’s going on around me 🙂 At any rate, I’ve been here 2 months now and it has been really good.
So, getting on with business–some more general observations that I have made in this country, made mostly through the fact that every day of my life here is some ridiculous new experience which is only made that much better by the fact that I can’t really understand what people are talking about half the time.
1. The Japanese have totally got it figured out when it comes to making life convenient. One of the best things ever is that the ATM machines balance your bank book for you. People don’t really write checks here so they don’t have checkbooks, but everyone has a bankbook and you just insert the book into the machine and it balances all your transactions for you. Amazing. Life is so convenient sometimes. Less convenient however, is that ATM’s close at 9pm. Who ever heard of an ATM closing????? Also I love that they come up with the wonderfully convenient idea of balancing your checkbook for you, but then inconvenience you with the fact that you can never use the ATM when you want to. Ahh Japan.
2. The fashion in this country is out of control!!!! I cannot even describe this to you, only seeing is believing in terms of the crazy shit people wear around here. They are all about the layering of totally weird clothes that don’t really go together, which sometimes is pretty cool-very funky and eclectic–and sometimes is just a hot ghetto mess from top to bottom.

The trials and tribulations of an Austrian-American in Japan

Writter by Fahad Mustafa on Posted in Beyond Nations, Travelogues Tagged

(This article was written originally as an email and has been modified only slightly for publication here. It is written in a somewhat hyperbolic, jesting tone and is meant to both amuse and inform).

So I have been living in Japan for about a week now, and am sort of starting to figure some things out. There have definitely been some moments of absolute confusion in which I just stare blankly at whomever is trying to explain something to me, but overall it has been ok. I don’t have internet yet, which is inconvenient, but I can use internet at the school where I’m teaching so it’s not too bad. I also got a cell phone which is totally sweet and does a bunch of absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary things that I haven’t quite figured out yet since the manual is all in Japanese. From what I’ve been able to figure out, there’s a camera, a radio, and a GPS system on it. Yaaaay for technology that I don’t understand!

Alright, as we all know, Japan is famous for its kooky game shows and wacky fashions so it should come as no surprise that things have been a little crazy. Here are a few of my initial observations:

1. EVERYTHING in this country is backwards. Water faucets turn on in the wrong direction; people drive on the wrong side of the road, which has already resulted in quite a few near-death experiences due to the fact that my little Austrian-American mind is seemingly incapable of comprehending the dynamics of left-side driving and the corresponding road-crossing survival techniques; people take off their shoes backwards, meaning they turn around and slip backwards out of their shoes thereby facilitating a quick get-away when putting their shoes back on (apparently this is important in a country where shoes get taken off and put on approximately 64 times a day); people back into parking spaces rather than pulling in from the front because it supposedly makes leaving easier and faster…is anyone else sensing a pattern of behavior geared toward making a quick a get-away as possible? Hmm, sehr interessant…

2. Roads don`t have names, which is the most irritating thing on earth. It results in a lot of confused directions, and having to draw maps for people so that they know where to go. Also, giving directions is always done in the form of “you’ll see a big tree, turn right there and then there’s a big building with a pink sign where you will need to turn left…”. Yeah, this does not really make for the clearest of directions… I’m sure I will get lost many a time because, shockingly, there will presumably be more than one big tree at which I could turn right.

Between Same Sex Contact and Identity: Politics of Homosexuality in Contemporary World

Writter by Fahad Mustafa on Posted in Homosexuality Tagged , ,

In an article published in this blog ( ‘Delhi out of the Closet’ on 07.05.2009), we have learned that New Delhi’s higher court “overturned the gay sex ban.” The article says:

“Homosexuality became illegal in 1861 when, under British rule, Section 377 of the Indian penal court was passed that prohibited ‘carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal’.”

What strikes me here is that the law was approached as colonial legacy, a reminder of the British rule that left its mark on the Indian society. This approach, however, misses an important point ; What was the situation before 1861? We can conclude from the above sentence that it wasn’t codified before 1861. Legality or illegality probably was not a matter of discussion. The right question may be how the society treated the issue; tolerant, indifferent or discontentful? Maybe it wasn’t a public issue at all. Perhaps the issue belonged to the private sphere as people didn’t see it as something to be publicized.

The rule has reminded me an interesting argument by Joseph Masad on the project of universalization of ‘gay rights’. I will simplify this sophisticated claim: What he calls ‘Gay International’, a group of organizations, discourses that have a ‘missionary’ role of saving and protecting human rights of the people who are discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation in especially non-Western world, led to the incitement to discourse in these countries. (in Arab Muslim countries) One outcome of this ‘incitement to discourse’ is the emergence of anti-homosexual law and harassment of these people by police, while before this discourse there wasn’t any law against same sex contact. Gay International’s mission is to “liberate Arab and Muslim ‘gays and lesbians’ from the oppression under which they allegedly live by transforming them from practitioners of same-sex contact into subjects who identify as homosexual and gay.” (Masad 2002, p.362) According to Gay International, same sex contact does not make the person a gay, rather they consider this kind of person as ‘not yet caught up in liberatory Western gay model.’

Distinction between same sex contact and homosexuality / gayness as identity makes the tolerance argument futile…

Climate change in Pictures

Writter by Fahad Mustafa on Posted in Climate Change

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Recently declassified photos taken from a US spy satellite show the impact of climate change on coastal waters. This particular one shows the Alaskan sea-port of Barrow where we see ice floating near the coast in July 2006, and the other one, taken a year later, shows an entirely ice-free coastline. Temperatures in Barrow have increased by 30 degrees in the past 40 years. Source: Guardian

Images are striking reminders. If you come across pictures that show the impact of climate change on the landscape, do send them in.