As if in response to the fiasco with the Kuwaiti weekends, we now have proof from England, the teet from which all parliaments suckled, that people, indeed, are capable of ruling themselves.
Shortly before leaving to make way for his fiscally sound Chancellor, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair outdid himself and set up a website to allow Brits the right to petition their Prime Minister directly in a coordinated way. After the drama surrounding the former British Prime Minister's refusal to listen to protestors opposed to the Iraq war, this was his way to show that he was "listening" to the people in England and, had it succeeded, it would have in fact been the complete opposite to how it was billed--it would have been the end of democracy. When people petition a leader instead of working to effect change themselves over time, what they are doing is recognising the petitioned's power over them, and acquiescing in the system which grants it. The Abbasid Caliphs and their contamperaneous European counterparts received petitioners; a modern Prime Minister should be no different from the citizens... and so, it was with great relish and joy that I discovered the "rejected petitions" lists.
Being inherently sensible, the e-petitioners knew exactly how to catch Central Government out: Demand that the UK invade France; Cancel Tuesdays and replace them with Fridays; lock Jade Goody inside the Big Brother House for good and best of all "make Pete's mom a national resource". There is usually a very pithy explanation for why the said petitiions were rejected, because they were "outside the remit or powers of the Prime Minister and Government", and this is it how it should be. They can impose taxation, fight wars abroad and build roads, but on the really important issues--locking up Jade Goody, changing the order of the days in the week and making friends' mothers available--governments are powerless. It is with the people that power lies. Enjoy reading: Great Ideas from the British Electorate.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Just an update...
... with regards to the last post: Kuwait will be enjoying a 3-day weekend this Thursday, Friday and Saturday, after which the country is meant to switch to the Friday and Saturday weekend. Momentous stuff indeed.
Today is also the day I turned 26... some times I feel like I've had the weight of the world on my shoulders and grown decades before my time, and others I just want to hang on to any shred of youth and try to tell myself that I am not that old. It struck me in a conversation today that I have only 14 years left before turning 40, and whence middle aged. My what a waste it's been, but some of it has been fun no doubt.
Well, until I figure out something a little bit more light-hearted to blog ...and, oh, in case you guys have missed it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKsoXHYICqU
It almost makes me want to be a Democrat... pity about the Middle East policies.
Today is also the day I turned 26... some times I feel like I've had the weight of the world on my shoulders and grown decades before my time, and others I just want to hang on to any shred of youth and try to tell myself that I am not that old. It struck me in a conversation today that I have only 14 years left before turning 40, and whence middle aged. My what a waste it's been, but some of it has been fun no doubt.
Well, until I figure out something a little bit more light-hearted to blog ...and, oh, in case you guys have missed it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKsoXHYICqU
It almost makes me want to be a Democrat... pity about the Middle East policies.
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
In a Month of Saturdays...
Picking out of a hat any number of Kuwait-related topics to blog on, I have chosen to write, my good friends, on the defiance of the Kuwaiti legislature (the link is in Arabic by the way) in the face of an executive decree to move the countryto a Friday/Saturday weekend as opposed to the current Thursday/Friday arrangement. Now, I believe that it's good to get a sense of perspective for these things. In this day and age, it might be useful for many of us to remember that there still exist many ways to count a year--Jewish, Hijri, even Bengali and Russian--slightly skewed from the normal Gregorian 3-6-5 full rotation about the Sun business, so I don't necessarily start off from a point of opposition to the Thursday/Friday weekend.
The thinking goes, that by having our weekends on the Thursday/Friday, we allow ourselves the same days of rest as the rest of the world and yet keep a vestige of Islam by ensuring that "our" holy day, conveniently a Friday, is kept sacred. You can see that things can get easily complicated if you're planning a bank transfer, parcel delivery or even an overseas phone call to a country anywhere else in the world, since even in the UAE and Qatar the state bureaucracies have adopted a Friday/Saturday weekend. On the other hand, it might be an idea to think of why we of have a weekend in the first place.
A "weekend" is itself is a patently Western idea, and the fact that the weekend came from Europe says much not only about differing patterns of industrialisation, but also about variations in hermeneutics between Islam and Christianity. The Western Sabbath has its justification in Genesis, where God creates a universe in six days and rests on the Seventh; somehow, this was interpreted very early on to mean that people, too, should rest on a seventh day. Remarkably, the line in Genesis is found nearly verbatim--translations permitting--in the Koran's Story of the Hefer, where:
"God created the Universe in Six Days, and rested on His throne on the Seventh"
(my translation)
but historically, the interpretation of this verse focused only on the anthropomorphism of God in this part of the Koran, and never on the number of days or hours it took God to create the world . It's only trite here to point out that a 7-day week in Genesis and in the Koran fits nicely into the Babylonian precedent to both of them, but I've just done it any way. Never in the history of Islam has a significant personage read the above verse and gone about insisting that we all not work on Friday--that people are now insisting we keep Friday holy is a sign of our self-orientalisation as it were, something which you all know I love to pick on. For the record, the debate between different Muslim attitudes to the anthropomorphism in the Koran is dealt with quite well in Nasr Abu Zaid's
الاتجاه العقلي في التفسير
(this book is not yet availale in English, I think, but I don't mind plugging Nasr Abu Zaid, one of the writers who restored my faith in Arab civilisation).
Indeed, in these days where the "Islamic finance" and the archaic codes of practice for Islamic banking are being promoted as the new elixir of life, we might choose to remember that in the very early days of Islam, the re-opening of markets after prayers were over on Friday was considered an imperative. In the very mercentile belief system of my ancestors--almost all of the great early Muslims were merchants at one point or another in their lives, including the Prophet Mohammed--money is not filthy, nor does dealing with it on the hallowed day involve make one less worthy in the eyes of God.
Ergo, the weekend itself is an example of that most vile of intellectual contraband in the Middle East, the بدعة, the innovation, the corrupting alien concept brought in to un-do the majestic purity of the religion of the desert. Never, in a month of Saturdays must this transgression on my faith be allowed to pass. My suggestion is: Drop the weekends altogether. Let us work like coolies under the sun. In order to amend for previous trespasses on the holy law, I suggest each parliamentarian in Kuwait gets 10 lashes for every Friday he shirked from work at the Assembly.
The thinking goes, that by having our weekends on the Thursday/Friday, we allow ourselves the same days of rest as the rest of the world and yet keep a vestige of Islam by ensuring that "our" holy day, conveniently a Friday, is kept sacred. You can see that things can get easily complicated if you're planning a bank transfer, parcel delivery or even an overseas phone call to a country anywhere else in the world, since even in the UAE and Qatar the state bureaucracies have adopted a Friday/Saturday weekend. On the other hand, it might be an idea to think of why we of have a weekend in the first place.
A "weekend" is itself is a patently Western idea, and the fact that the weekend came from Europe says much not only about differing patterns of industrialisation, but also about variations in hermeneutics between Islam and Christianity. The Western Sabbath has its justification in Genesis, where God creates a universe in six days and rests on the Seventh; somehow, this was interpreted very early on to mean that people, too, should rest on a seventh day. Remarkably, the line in Genesis is found nearly verbatim--translations permitting--in the Koran's Story of the Hefer, where:
"God created the Universe in Six Days, and rested on His throne on the Seventh"
(my translation)
but historically, the interpretation of this verse focused only on the anthropomorphism of God in this part of the Koran, and never on the number of days or hours it took God to create the world . It's only trite here to point out that a 7-day week in Genesis and in the Koran fits nicely into the Babylonian precedent to both of them, but I've just done it any way. Never in the history of Islam has a significant personage read the above verse and gone about insisting that we all not work on Friday--that people are now insisting we keep Friday holy is a sign of our self-orientalisation as it were, something which you all know I love to pick on. For the record, the debate between different Muslim attitudes to the anthropomorphism in the Koran is dealt with quite well in Nasr Abu Zaid's
الاتجاه العقلي في التفسير
(this book is not yet availale in English, I think, but I don't mind plugging Nasr Abu Zaid, one of the writers who restored my faith in Arab civilisation).
Indeed, in these days where the "Islamic finance" and the archaic codes of practice for Islamic banking are being promoted as the new elixir of life, we might choose to remember that in the very early days of Islam, the re-opening of markets after prayers were over on Friday was considered an imperative. In the very mercentile belief system of my ancestors--almost all of the great early Muslims were merchants at one point or another in their lives, including the Prophet Mohammed--money is not filthy, nor does dealing with it on the hallowed day involve make one less worthy in the eyes of God.
Ergo, the weekend itself is an example of that most vile of intellectual contraband in the Middle East, the بدعة, the innovation, the corrupting alien concept brought in to un-do the majestic purity of the religion of the desert. Never, in a month of Saturdays must this transgression on my faith be allowed to pass. My suggestion is: Drop the weekends altogether. Let us work like coolies under the sun. In order to amend for previous trespasses on the holy law, I suggest each parliamentarian in Kuwait gets 10 lashes for every Friday he shirked from work at the Assembly.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
