This post is neither political nor religious. I was simply surprised to learn the above, from an article I just read about Japan's not sennding troops to Iraq:
In reply to:
Japan's move made it but the latest important potential troop contributor to refuse- after India, Pakistan and, most important of all, Turkey, which would have signalled the first significant involvement of or Muslim nation.
I'm not sure what the "or" was doing in there, but that typo, and the implication that Pakistan is not Muslim certainly had me questioning the skiills of whoever served as editor for the piece. Or did I misread the statement?
Dear max: Have the Pakistanis found out yet that they are not Muslims? Will they be surprised?
Probably something missing between of and or: an Asian or Muslim nation -- the implication that any of the countries mentioned could have qualified (Asian and Muslim overlapping).
Bingley
max, your right, is a matter of 'loose language'.
Pakistan is not a Muslim country, nor is Turkey, nor is the US a Christian country.
All three are democratcies (of varying orders) two of which have a population that mostly consist of muslims, one of which as a population that is mostly christian...
there are country's who's basic law- (civil and criminal) is based on religious tenets, their courts of law, are administered by religious leaders,
- and there are countries that have a majority of the population that hold the same values, (based on religion) and while these values might have an influence on the laws passed, the court systems are control by civil authorities...
Pakistan, and Turkey, and India, and US, would all be part of the latter group.
Bingley and of troy: you-all have just impressed the heck out of me!
I would never have thought of either of those utterly rational responses. [bow]
All three are democratcies
Pakistan is not a democracy, oftroy; it is currently a dictatorship and has been a dictatorship for almost three decades of its existence. As for being a muslim country, the conventional long, formal name of the country is ' The Islamic Republic of Pakistan'. And the law in the country is the Muslim Shariah law.
PS: Hey! I just discovered something. If you type [/ blue] before the text and [ blue] after, the part that you wanted to highlight stays black and the text of your post turns blue!!! Neat, eh?
One board I used to habituate continued to apply unclosed tags to the rest of the page.
the implication that Pakistan is not Muslim
Max, as I read it, there is no implication that Pak is not a Muslim nation. All the writer seems to say, is that Turkey might have been the FIRST Muslim nation to involve itself with the post-war reconstruction. The operative word seems to be - first.
Maahey!
I appreciate your points about the Islamic Nation of Pakistan, and even about the preponderance of military disctatoships in its history (after all - I lived through the 'blackouts' in Bombay during the 1970 war), but it was my understandng that most of the Generals, even, in Pakistan, have opposed the use of Shariah law. In fact, if Shariah law were followed constitutionally, would Benazir Bhutto have been allowed to become Prime Minister?
cheer
the sunshine "Hindu-Chini bhai-bhai" warrior
thanks maahey, i stand corrected.
there is , in US press, a distressing tendecy to use the term muslim country as disparaging term..
and there is some anti-islamic feeling,in a percentage of US population.
i am more or less a christian (with emphisis on less) and was raised catholic.
i can identify, readily, all the good thing the catholic church as done (they were drilled into my head, as a child in school)
glossed over, and sanitized (in school)were some of the less savory actions..(inquisition, etc). i try not to lump all muslims into the 'same catagory'--just as there are right-wing fanatics (who call themselves 'christian', but who preach hate, and bigotry) there are also saintly christians, who are willing to give up their lives for others (one group of nuns, has volunteered to become human testers of AIDS virus vaccine.)
I recognize that government and laws can 'take the worst case example', and make it the law, (with or with out a 'religious' excuse).. and that's wrong..
One of the sticking point in 're-uniting ireland used to be the irish constitutional prohibitting of divorce. --the catholic church, in certain circumstances permits divorce.. but the irish government used not to recognize a divorce even when rome (catholic church) did.. stupid really. some predominatly muslim country's are 'just as stupid'--but.. all too often the US press fails to note 1)'christian' goverments stupidity, 2)and presents facts (out of context) that show islamic based laws in the worst context. 3) they also fail to note that a particlar law, might be exceptional, and not realy common to most islamic experience.
(so they would present a case, along the lines of 'Divorce, is total outlawed, even when religious leaders recognize it.. this results in women being abandon by their husbands, who go to other countries, and take new wife's. the first wife is left, with no legal recourse.. she often can not buy or sell(jointly held) property, because if she is legally married, she need her husbands co-signature, nor can she collect allimony.
but her husband, can legally sell a home that his wife is living in, (if she is not listed as a co-owner)right out from under her, and leave her, and children homeless.
this was the case in ireland, but it is not 'common or usual' in countries with large christian (or even catholic populations)..and if presented as 'an example' (and not as an anomaly) it paints a skewed picture...
i think, very often, the US press is guilty of 'presenting facts' about islamic/muslim countries in just that sort of way... it make the government/laws seem very unfair, unjust, and uncomprihensible...
Thanks, maahey. I hadn't thought of reading it that way. If anything, that confirms my original complaint, that the piece had not been written clearly enough. Since my Dad grew up and went to school in what is now Pakistan, and the (now)elite boarding school he attended has had its chapel converted into a mosque, the notion that Pakistan was not included as a Muslim nation made me smile.
Wa-as salaam alaikum
Maahey
All the writer seems to say, is that Turkey might have been the FIRST Muslim nation to involve itself with the post-war reconstruction. The operative word seems to be - first.
Interesting take. One way of looking at it might be that India too, could be viewed as a Muslim nation, since only Indonesia (as far as I am aware) has more than India's 150 million+ Muslims. So India is the world's second largest Muslim state. Or is that figure now out of date?
cheer
the sunshine warrior
>One way of looking at it might be that India too, could be viewed as a Muslim nation, since only Indonesia (as far as I am aware) has more than India's 150 million+ Muslims. So India is the world's second largest Muslim state
Which reminds me of an article I read arguing that Partition was disastrous for Muslims on the subcontinent, that their political clout in a unified India would have been much more significant than the situation as it stands today.
My dear shanks!!!
India too, could be viewed as a Muslim nation, since only Indonesia (as far as I am aware) has more than India's 150 million+ Muslims. So India is the world's second largest Muslim state. I shall admit that I was somewhat thunderstruck by this. India does have a large number of Muslims, but that CANNOT and DOES NOT make it a Muslim state. [shudder] [hysterical
]
For one, Hindus are the majority in India and outnumber the Muslims. So, just simply in terms of numbers, that statement does not hold. India is the largest democracy in the world and its commitment to secularism is written into the constituion. And then, a nation can only be called a Muslim state if IT professes to be one and openly wears its religion on its sleeve, which Pakistan does. I would not call Turkey or Somalia Muslim states. And lastly, the generals (from Ayub to Perverse Pervez)actually used the mullahs and the ulema in Pakistan to quell democratic uprisisngs. General Zia was the man most responsible for the increasing Islamisation of Pakistan and for effecting the firm entrenchment of the Shariah law in Pakistani society.
oftroy, thank you for your post. I agree with each one of your points wholeheartedly.
the US press is guilty of 'presenting facts' about islamic/muslim countries in just that sort of way Ed Said wrote a marvellous book on just this in the early eighties. Even then, misrepresentation by the media, was felt acutely enough by large sections; enough for him to write a great book. The subject matter was just as relevant then as it is now and a new edition was released with a new preface in the late nineties or 2000. The book is, "Covering Islam". (note the clever pun) What a giant of a man he was. I wept when he died.
India does have a large number of Muslims, but that CANNOT and DOES NOT make it a Muslim state.
I agree, By shank's reasoning we could say that Chicago is a Polish city.
regularly, comments are made about NYC having the second largest population of irish men and women (living in cities.. (only dublin has more) and NYC is the second largest jewish city, with only Jerusalem having more, and for a while it was true of Italians, (Rome), PR, (san jose), and even Poles (and NYC is not known as a city with a large Polish population) and so on, and so on... (NYC might be only the third largest city of filipeno's.
as NYC immigrant population nexis has shifted to asia, it's becomes 'the largest city of 'hunan chinese(second to some small city in that 'state' of china), (since immigration from specific areas of asian countries might be large, but many chinese cities are larger than NYC sub-population)
certainly, the 'evident' population of muslims in US has grown -(the first in NYC were some time in 1600's!) --i judge this by 2 aspects..1) there are more mosques in NYC, and 2)(bless their hearts)muslim's in NY have gained enough political power to demand that alternate side of the street parking be suspended on their religious holidays too, (for years, alternate side of the street parking has been limited to christian 'holy days of obligation', and jewish holidays.) Now our dear muslim brethern have added another half dozen days! makes me want to say, praise allah!
(i am waiting for the buddist to get to work..., and i don't now why santeria holidays aren't observed with suspentions.. surely there are shinto holidays that are being slighted...i love differsity!)
Maahey
Dear oh dear. I didn't intentionally mean to tail-tweak. I apologise.
But, for instance, India is the world's largest Parsi country, and Bombay the world's largest Parsi city, even though the Parsi's are in the majority nowhere in the world. It is, as such, their homeland, and it seems a bit mean (?) to deny them that.
India is, similarly, the world's largest Sikh country, and the world's largest Jain country. No?
So although India is (if I remember my Preamble to the Constitution correctly) a Sovereign Socialist Democratic Republic, and secular to boot, is it really that incorrect to say that it is also a large Muslim country? Or is that lack of correctness simply based upon different ways of assuming that words work?
After all, by that token, India is not a Hindu country either, but you would be hard pressed to find anybody who does not, in casual use, describe it as that.
I dunno. But I apologise if I offended...
cheer
the sunshine warrior
What on earth do religious holidays and 'suspension of alternate side of the street parking' have to do with each other?
I'm not even sure what alternate side of the street parking is? Some sort of system where car A has to park on the left, car B on the right, car C on the left and so on?
Bingley
Yikes! Shanks!! I was NOT AT ALL offended!! It takes a lot more than a thread like this to offend me. Whatever gave you the notion? Am very curious to know what it was in my post that made you think I was? Was it the hysterical shudder!?
My dear, I thought that would make everyone laugh! I constantly fret at this way of communication; it is sometimes rather hard to transliterate the tone of a post, isn't it? Rest assured, I wasn't.
Coming back to the issue -
The problem is in the intermixion of religion and nations, shanks. Whenever you adjectivise a religon and tag it on to a nation, the immediate implication is one of a fundamentalist state. India, like the rest of the world, has invested significant time and effort in keeping religion and governance separate and in maintatining that divide. Which is why I baulked at the loose construction. These things catch on before you know it and will sooner or later, set the vicious cycle of misrepresentation to serve petty interests rolling.
It is not mean to deny any community the right to tag on their relgion to the name of a state. Religion is a private business, is not the business of the state and I strongly feel, that any religious or sectarian group that would like that position altered, should NOT be pandered to. Nations like India that are intensely culturally diverse and that have always prided themselves on that fact, should always be on their guard to preserve unity in diversity.
Relax! oh cheerful one!
maahey
Huge sigh of relief from this side of the Thames.
I entirely agree with what you say about a diverse country like India doing its best to maintain its diversity and not pin to the mast the colours of any one religion. I fear, and you may know more about this than I do, that the current Hindutva movement is turning India into a less than salubrious place for followers of other religions, with Muslims in particular being targets.
I left India a little over 10 years ago, just a few years after the appalling Babri Masjid fiasco, but a few months ahead of the bombs and rioting in Bombay that set the stage for the steady decline to follow. I may be wrong about this, but my parents still live in Bombay, and as far as I can tell, the Hindutva idea has taken root as something of a fait accompli. I don't know if the majority of Indians still take the secularist stance, but if not, it will be the beginning of the end of a great tradition.
the sunshine "gloomy about India" warrior
The idea behind alternate side parking is that everybody parks on the even side of the street (the side on which the buildings with even addresses are) on even numbered days and on the odd side on odd numbered days. This is not as simple as it sounds, since the day in question is the following day (it's overnight parking that is being regulated) and you get consecutive odd numbered days at the end of months with an odd number of days. As I understand it, it's a snow-plowing thing, assuring that at least one side of the street will be fully plowed if overnight plowing is a necessity.
it's a snow-plowing thing
Going back to of troy's post...and Bingely's question...this has *what to do with religious holidays?
in NYC, alternate side of the street parking is all the time, (not just for snow)its for street cleaning...
so 2 days of the week (on my block, thursday and friday) all cars have to be moved..(the street need to be clear of parked cars--between 9:30 and 11) one side thursday, one side friday..
these regulations are 'suspended' for religious holidays.. (religious jews, made the arguement, they could not comply, it was interfering with their ability to freely practice their faith-- (since on certain holydays, like on the sabbeth, they can not light a match--(make a spark) so they also can not 'start' a car...)
well, being politically savvy, the holiday/holydays that had 'exemptions' grew... and eventually, some savvy person, demanded the same for 'christian holiday' (all 10 RCatholic 'holy days of obligation')--but really there is no compelling reason why catholics couldn't move a car.. its just no politian wants to be arguing against an organized religion...
the muslim community has in recent years, reached a number large enough to represent a voting 'bloc'-- and they too have gotten polically savy, so now, the last few days of ramadan, (coming soon), and other muslim holidays,(i don't know them, or their signifigance, but i love to hear 'alternate side of the street parking is suspended today' are also 'exempt'--
so slowly but surely, alternate side of the street parking days are being reduced...
I am waiting for the other religious groups--from all over the world, to join in....
sure the streets might be a little dirtier... but parking will be easier..
please note, if you forget to move your car, a $100 parking ticket will be your 'reward'-- and the days and hours of regulation change, from block to block, so you have to construct large mental of maps of where you can park when, or you need to change your schedule, or sit and wait for a space, or sit double parked (un manned double parked cars get tickets too!) for the duration of alternate side of the street..
i get off easy... in many neighborhoods in manhattan, its posted that double and triple fines are in effect.. (so they get $200 or $300 parking tickets!) visitors to my fair city, (if they have ever paid for parking) have been astounded at the cost... but paying for parking is cheaper than 2 tickets--which is how the parking garages stay in business. but i am cheap, i like to park for free.
Never having had to cope with this alternate side parking routine, would I be correct in assuming that once the plow or street sweeper has passed down a block, the previously verboten side of the street then becomes fair game?
not until proper time has elapsed.. if the sweeper shows up at 9:31, you still can't park there till 11--
oh, and Dept of Sanitaion, as well as Dept of Traffic can hand out tickets..
its something of scandel right now.. city is in a budget crunch.. we lost billions of dollars in past 2 years, the tourist industry is big money maker, not to mention many business relocated to NJ and LI immediately after 9/11 and never came back.. and many business lost in .... well end result, city budget is in red, and city as responded by a ticketing blitz!
i won't even begin to get into extra expenses NYC has, that fed's has refused to help with.. we are always 'one color code higher alert' than the rest of the country, and we do not get federal cops, NYC just has to put more of its own cops on the street, even if it requires OT... and UN has had a busy year.. we do not get 'extra money' for UN...just extra grief of traffic and security nightmares!
woah, glad i don't have a car
In my neighborhood, we can park on either side of the street, with the exception of 2am to 6am, alternate sides of the street. This means I can park in front of my house Tuesday night, Thursday night, and Saturday and Sunday nights. Monday night, Wednesday night and Friday night I have to park on the other side of the street. This is not a problem unless you have the flu and have to drag yourself out at some point to move your car or if you go away on vacation, leaving your car behind. Then you have to find a good place to store the car while you're gone.
This seems as good a place as any to trot out one of my Pommy Pet Peeves.
The motor car has been a fact of life in England for a century or more, now, but the city planners seem to have entered into a conspiracy to ignore its existence. Streets in new estates are narrow to the point of absurdity. New estates also very rarely have anywhere to park on the road at all, the assumption being, presumably, that you will never want more cars than you have garage space for. The streets on the estate I currently live on, built in the early 1960s, are wider than modern ones. But they are still too narrow to have legally parked cars on both sides of the road, plus a space between the parked cars on opposite sides of the road wide enough to allow two meeting cars to pass.
Everybody therefore puts at least two wheels up on the footpath which is, strictly speaking, illegal.
This is just one facet of the anti-car official British attitude which I find inexplicable, given that the people who organise and run the diastrous railway network couldn't run a successful booze-up in a brewery.
What is meant by "estate"? Over-cross-pond here it means something different. I think I know, having spent time in England, but I'd rather a native &/or resident splain me &/or us.
Buncha houses built by a developer as a job lot. Usually aims to maximise both profits and the discomfort of the unfortunate purchasers, since most estate houses are little more than dog boxes ...
Anna, my friend in Yorkshire explained to me that over there, council estate is pretty much what we call housing projects. Though the one I saw was a little nicer than the projects I've seen over here.
I was unable to find a picture of one, but in my search came across this--a set of instructions to tenants such as I don't think you'd ever see, here. Scroll down just a bit, to housekeeping. If you have a good deal of time, click on the link at the bottom of the page, to get to a picture of the building they're talking about.
http://www22.homepage.villanova.edu/margaret.boerner/GPSTips.htm
A council estate is a housing estate provided originally by the local authority for renting out at rents that were intended to be manageable for local authority workers, and those in the stupidly poorly paid caring professions (eg: nurses, firemen, policemen, ambulance drivers, dustmen etc.). Maybe they are like the Projects in US cities that I have read of, but thinking back to Last Exit to Brooklin (Hubert Selby Jr, not Mark Knopfler), I am not too sure. Maybe none of the Projects are as full of hopelessness as that now (hopefully), after all, Selby was writing of the 1950s.
Councils today have often made over their estates to housing associations, and there has been a ‘right to buy’ policy operating for some years. These things have resulted in improvements to many council estates.
A housing estate’s roads normally serve only the estate, they are not through routes. (Think of a simple maze with only one way in/out). These days estates are required to have a minimum acreage of green space – since so many are built on flood plains this can often be overcome by allowing space for a ‘balancing pond’ for the stream to flood into if the rain is extra heavy. These can be attractive if done well with proper planting.
Housing estates may consist of low cost housing or pretty/very expensive housing and an increasing trend is to mix the two somewhat in hope of getting a more varied and successful community.
Re:Maybe they are like the Projects in US cities that I have read of,
housing projects (ie, low income housing projects, build with federal money, but administered by state/local authorities)vary greatly, not only city to city, and state to state, but even with-in a city...
NYC has some very desirable projects... they are neat, well kept, the surrounding area have middle to high income values.. etc,.. and some projects that are high rise slums, rife with crime.
When they were first build (many in the 1930, the last in the 1960's) they were very desirable and most housed working poor. my ex's parents lived in one (in harlem) when he was born and till the he was age 8 or so. FIL was an engineer for Parks Dept (he worked on both worlds fairs) MIL was a Nurse (work for non-profit 'The foundling Home', later worked for NYC Dept of Health.--doing TB treatment.)
In late 1960's, a combination of things happened, rural poor from south moved north (to Chicago, Detroit, NY, Phili) and manytimes overwhelmed the cities abilities to absorb them.. welfare was easy to get, and many projects went from being a place for working poor families, to being warehouses for displaced rural single parent families on welfare. Drug use was everywhere in the late 1960's and 1970's, but in the projects, with high density populations, and poor social outlooks, it was worse.
some projects 'failed' other projects came through not only intact, but in better shape than ever.
NYC is lucky. most people live in high rise buildings..people like me, actively chose to do so... better projects, at first glance are hard to recognize.
about 5 years ago, i was driving a intern (summer technology intern) 'home' to his place in downtown brooklyn. was we approached the brooklyn bridge, we passed the 'Alfred E Smith' housing project. the intern looked at buildings, (rather plain red bricks) and the site (in the shadow of the bridge)with, several parks and play area's visible) and expressed a desire 'to be able to live there' he found them, as viewed from the car, to be as nice as other 'building complexes' ( some luxury, some middle class)we had passed along the way.
thing is, bad housing projects get a lot of bad press, good ones don't.. everyone ends up thinking all housing projects are bad.
everyone ends up thinking all housing projects are bad. Yes, it seems that the only newsworthy things are the negatives, most of the time.
