Terry Levine | Noggin Advertising | Copywriter | Digital + Direct Writer | Blogging | Toronto | Canada

INDONESIA: THE KEY TO COMING TO TERMS WITH ISLAM?

Some more food for thought from Robert Kaplan's fascinating book Monsoon, in which he suggests that the "problem with Islam" may not be Islam itself but rather the legacy of empire in the Arab Middle East.

Indonesia, for instance, whose Muslim population rivals the Arab world's in numbers, is home to a very different, less inward looking and less angry Islam.

"This is not the Middle East where you fight for the sake of fighting in the name of God," Kaplan quotes Yusni Saby, rector of the State Institute of Islamic Studies in Banda Aceh. "Religion should not focus on enemies. We have good relations with Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and others."

Kaplan explains: "Indonesia may be the globe's most populous Muslim society, but it is also home to sizable minorities of Chinese, Christians and Hindus. Thus, it is functionally a secular state, and this has given rise to Muslim civic organizations that are the largest in the world, because [mono-cultural] Islamic states like those in the Middle East simply do not require them."

Alyasa Abubakar, another Islamic scholar and colleague of Saby, has equally provocative and surprising comments on the subject of Islam and the rest of the world. "Here in Indonesia, religion is not black or white, but has many grays... Geography has given Indonesia a different interpretation of religion. Muslims in the Middle East are obsessed with their glorious past, which means little to us." [My emphasis, more on this in a moment.]

Finally, Kaplan quotes former Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid, known as Gus Dur, whose comments frankly blow me away: "Radical groups are weak here. This is the last breath of radicalism before it will be liquidated. Formal Islam is not in demand, unlike in the Middle East. Only in the Middle East has the religion been politicized. With Hamas there is only shouting. The initiatives belong to the Jews, who are working in a systematic way to create a future." [Again, my emphasis.]

Overall, these quotes offer a tantalizing key to solving the "Islamic problem" or so-called "clash of civilizations." Squaring the circle between the West and Islam may rest not where Islam began but rather in Muslim "suburbs" like Indonesia where, although not entirely free of radical Islamic sentiment, the religion and its adherents have largely come to terms with "the other."

The areas I've emphasized above also got me thinking: how much of Muslim animosity toward Jews in Israel is wrapped up in Arab Muslim pride and shame for a "glorious past" and empire lost? I wonder if Arab Muslims have so much difficulty with Israel's existence not so much because Palestinian Arabs don't have a state -- one can argue there is one for the taking in the eastern part of historic Palestine called Jordan -- but rather because Arabs still view the Middle East and North Africa as their hood. Empires, after all, aren't inclined to give up what they've conquered. The territory occupied by the Unites States, for instance, is clearly land seized from Native Americans but I suspect there are no circumstances under which the US would willingly return, say, California or Michigan to its original inhabitants. Likewise China's occupation of Tibet. Empires, like roach motels, are one-way streets: conquered land and people go in but they don't come out -- at least not without a fight.

MAY 2ND ELECTIONS: RAE DAY.

As election day in Canada approaches, I could read the parties' red and blue and orange books and decide who I'll vote for based on a considered evaluation of their platforms. But the truth is, as hard as they try to convince us, they're not all that different. The conservatives are not really fascists and the NDP aren't communists. (The Liberals for their part aren't even really that liberal.)

Let's be honest. Our three main national parties are varying shades of one another on a scale of mercy toward the little guy -- somewhere to the right of the Conservatives are Republican-style right-wingers who believe in pure "survival of the fittest" capitalism and wacko religious craziness and somewhere to the left of the New Democrats are command economy types who believe capitalism is evil.

Over the course of my 24 years or so of voting, I've cast ballots for Liberals, Conservatives, New Democrats and Greens. I've voted the party, the issues, the leader and the MP. While most people who know me would probably classify me as a lefty, I think of myself as a left-leaning centrist somewhere between a Liberal and New Democrat. The main reason I lean left is because I'm a lefty on social issues and, at least in my voting lifetime, I've felt that our economic policies too often favour corporate greed to the detriment of poor people. I'm certain that if our country were dominated by unions instead of corporations, I'd vote right to balance things out.

So who to vote for? And why?

As I mentioned, I don't have much interest in creating little charts to compare the party platforms. They're not all that different and once in power whichever party governs will ditch policy points it deems inconvenient.

How about the leaders? Issues and policies aside, which leader you support is completely subjective and based on gut. While obviously brilliant, Stephen Harper creeps me out. He has that overcontrolled calm demeanor of someone you imagine snapping one sunny day and killing his wife and small children -- and the cat. (Relax, I didn't say that's literally Harper, just that that's who he reminds me of.) Michael Ignatieff is equally brilliant, perhaps more so, and nearly as creepy. I don't imagine him offing his family. He's more the kind of creep who plasters photos of his victims all over the walls in his house. (Again, it's a metaphor. I'm sure Iggy's damask wallpaper is lovely.) Jack Layton is certainly the most likable of the three leaders, though I have trouble trusting anyone with a mustache and he still looks a little too much like the Video Professor for me to take him seriously.

So I'm left with choosing between my riding candidates. My MP in Toronto-Centre is Bob Rae, a former Ontario NDP Premier who drifted to the Liberals and twice failed in his bid to become leader of the party, probably because of baggage from his time as premier. I love Bob Rae. He's obviously a left-leaning centrist like me. He's got enough of a sense of humor to show his toosh on national TV. And I still remember watching the 2006 Liberal leadership convention and marvelling at the ease and charisma with which he delivered his speech. He, and he alone, looked and sounded like an inspiring leader. He, and he alone, reminded me of the Canadian leader by which all Canadian leaders are measured: Pierre Trudeau.

So, although Rae's not at the helm of the party (yet), I can still vote for him to represent me in Ottawa.

And I will proudly on May 2.

 

 

ACTION WITH IQ: 140 WORDS ON HANNA.

There have a been a spate of movies -- The Adjustment Bureau and Limitless come to mind -- that portend a promising trend in Hollywood (or a fad?): big budget films delivering an intriguing and intelligent premise instead of simply catering to the lowest common denominator. Hanna is one more such movie.

A cross between the Bourne movies and The Boys From Brazil, Hanna follows its eponymous teenage heroine, trained as an assassin by her father in wilds of Finland, to Morocco and Spain as she hunts down the person who killed her mother and, paradoxically, gave her life.

Saoirse Ronan is riveting as Hanna, Eric Bana dreamy as her father and Cate Blanchett radiantly creepy as CIA agent Marissa. And there's the Chemical Brothers soundtrack, which gives a 70s aura to the film in the way Daft Punk's recent work made TRON: Legacy feel all 80s.

THE BEST CANADIAN MOVIE EVER: 140 WORDS ON INCENDIES.

I've always been drawn to stories, to mysteries and myths. Books and movies that overanalyze characters usually bore me. It's why those I remember and love are intricate ones like Jeffrey Archer's Kane and Abel or Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth. It's why my own perpetually in-the-works novel is so plot-focused. And it's why I loved the film Incendies, directed by Denis Villeneuve, based on Wajdi Mouawad's play and nominated last year for a Best Foreign Language Academy Award.

Like some ancient riddle of the Sphinx, Incendies offers a mystery you can't help but want to solve. And when you do, as shocking and cleverly simple as it is, you can't help but feel the kind of calm satisfaction that comes from finishing a great book.

The only mystery after watching Incendies was how it wasn't nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. It was that good.

 

THE DELIBERALIZATION OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY.

Growing up, it was a given that Jews voted Liberal or even NDP in Canada and Democratic in the US. Never Conservative. Never Republican. No one in my family voted anything but Liberal. And it's safe to say my federal riding -- Mount Royal -- which had a large Jewish community was proud, even giddy, that our Liberal Member of Parliament also happened to be the Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Trudeau.

If you were even more of a leftist, you could also take pride that Jews like David Lewis played a central role in founding Canada's third party, the NDP, and that Jews like Dave Barrett and Stephen Lewis and Bob Rae (okay, half) continued to guide the party.

In the US, it was a Democratic President, Harry Truman, who was pivotal in Israel's founding, another, Jimmy Carter, who helped the Jewish state and Egypt find peace and, at least while it lasted, a third -- Bill Clinton -- nearly helped Israel and the Palestinians to come to terms.

And of course Israel itself was re-imagined and resurrected almost entirely by socialist Jews from Eastern Europe and was dominated by the left for 30 years.

There are many reasons Jews found a home on the political left throughout the 20th century. There has always been a strong strain of social justice in the Jewish community and in the religion itself. Jews have always taken care of one another and were sensitive to injustice against others -- Jews, after all, were among the first "whites" to support Martin Luther King at a time when other whites -- Italians, Irish, Germans -- were trying their best to fit into the WASP establishment. Jews saw very clearly in the black community their own struggle with slavery and, I think, African-Americans saw in Jews inspiration.

In spite of the odds -- most Jews came to North America with little or nothing -- Jewish ingenuity and persistence helped them make great successes of themselves yet they continued to support the poor and dispossessed and the arts -- and still do. Just look at the names of the benefactors behind any major North American city's hospitals, museums, libraries, charities; Jews disproportionately support them all.

There's a darker reason of course for Jewish identification with the left. Fascism and the Holocaust sealed the deal during and after the War -- the right was simply not a place for the Jews.

But something is changing.

Jews are finding a home in the Conservative party. More Jews are voting Republican. The Majority Leader in the US House of Representatives is a Jewish Republican, in fact the only Jewish Republican in Congress. Many of George W. Bush's neo-con advisers were Jews -- and once upon a time ulitra-leftist Jews at that. A week doesn't go by when I don't hear a relative or Jewish friend say something like "Obama is anti-Israel or an anti-Semite." I'll point out that Obama has been vocal in his support of Israel or that his chief of staff and communications director were both Jews but they're not convinced.

Israel too has moved to the right. Leftist prime ministers have governed for only eight of the last 34 years -- much of this to do with a hardening of politics in Israel. Feeling continually under attack from Hamas and Hezbollah and threatened by Syria, Iraq and Iran made Israelis hypersensitive to security and patriotism -- and of course it's the right that does a singular job of wrapping itself up in the flag and questioning those who voice disapproval or dissent with policies like settlement building. It doesn't help either that the international left and organizations like the United Nations -- which ironically created the state of Israel -- were hijacked long ago by pro-Arab supporters and became stridently anti-Israel. Organizations that concerned themselves with the welfare of average people somehow convinced themselves, the media and the world that the hundreds of millions of disenfranchised Arabs and Muslims under Islamic and dictatorial regimes were less of a concern than disenfranchised Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Syria's Assad could murder 30,000 innocent civilians in his own country in a week without a peep from leftist human rights organizations but a rubber bullet from an IDF rifle hitting a rock-throwing child was convulsively magnified to immense proportions. Israelis and Jews in the Diaspora, disgusted by what they saw as an unfair and disproportionate response by so-called defenders of human rights on the left, unthinkable, unimaginably, began looking for a new home.

And that's where we find ourselves now. The social justice organizations and political parties that, in many cases, Jews helped to found are perceived to have rejected the community that was once at their core. And those on the WASP establishment right, who once kept Jews out, now court them, invite them to their country clubs and ask for their votes.

And, it seems, more and more Jews are taking the bait.

 

QUEBEC, SRI LANKA AND THE MINORITY COMPLEX.

Some more food for thought from Robert Kaplan's fascinating book Monsoon. Among his profiles of the major nations around the Indian Ocean, Kaplan discusses the history and political affairs of Sri Lanka, off the coast of India, where majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils were in protracted 26-year civil war until a few years ago.

He writes:

"The majority Buddhist Sinhalese, who constitute more than three quarters of Sri Lanka's population of twenty million, have lived in fear of being overwhelmed by the Hindu Tamils, who, though composing only 18 percent of the population, can theoretically call upon their sixty million ethnic and religious compatriots living just across the Palk Straight in southeastern India['s Tamil Nadu province]."

He continues:

"[L]ike the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia and the Shiites in Iran, the Sinhalese are a demographic majority with a dangerous minority complex of persecution."

Even before I read that last line, another group, closer to home, popped into my head: the Québécois. Like the Sinhalese, they are a clear majority in their jurisdiction -- the province of Quebec -- yet a great many French-speaking Quebecers continue to treat English as a threat to the survival of the French language and culture. Quebec anglos aren't viewed as a minority in Quebec but rather as a beachhead of English Canada and North America right in French Quebec's backyard. Like the Sinhalese, French Quebecers are a majority with, as Kaplan calls it, a "dangerous minority complex."

And while thankfully this hasn't led to anywhere near the dire situation Sri Lanka faced for the last quarter century, it has resulted in some violence back in the 1970s and civil rights abuses like Quebec's stringent French-language laws.

I suspect recognizing the psychology of this minority complex and figuring out how to deal with it openly and honestly -- as evidenced by Canada's flexible and generally respectful politicians -- can go a long way to keeping a lid on the phenomenon's uglier side.

 

POINTLESS: 140 WORDS ON LIMITLESS.

As one who's found every excuse imaginable to not get serious about finishing his literary masterpiece, I feel Eddie Morra's pain. Eddie, played by Bradley Cooper in the recently released Limitless, is a struggling writer who discovers a black market wonder drug called NZT that makes him laser-focused and able to use 100% of his brain power. In no time, Eddie finishes his novel and goes on to use his new-found brainiacity to make tons of money and get the girl.

Like the Adjustment Bureau, Limitless is entertaining and fast-paced and grounded in a delicious idea but there's seemingly no NZT to save this movie from its pointlessness. Compare it to masterpieces that deliver like the Matrix or Inception and it just doesn't hold up. Which is too bad because, like Eddie, it had a lot of potential but seems unwilling to put in the effort.

*****

If the topic of Limitless interested you, check out how to become a forensic scientist.

 

.

SMALL DECISIONS, EARTHSHAKING EVENTS.

"Earthshaking events are sometimes set in motion by small decisions. Perhaps the most famous example was when Rosa Parks boarded a segregated bus in Montgomery, Ala. More recently, a Tunisian fruit vendor’s refusal to pay a bribe set off a revolution that continues to sweep across the Arab world. [Another] came two decades ago, when a minor East German bureaucratic foul-up loosed a tide of liberation across half of Europe. On the evening of Nov. 9, 1989, a tumultuous throng of people pressed against the Berlin Wall at Checkpoint Charlie, in response to an erroneous announcement that the ban on travel to the West would be lifted immediately. The captain in charge of the befuddled East German border guards dialed and redialed headquarters to find some higher-up who could give him definitive orders. None could. He put the phone down and stood still for a moment, pondering. “Perhaps he came to his own decision,” Michael Meyer of Newsweek would write. “Whatever the case, at 11:17 p.m. precisely, he shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, ‘Why not?’ . . . ‘Alles auf!’ he ordered. ‘Open ’em up,’ and the gates swung wide.”

"The Iron Curtain did not unravel at that moment, but that night the possibility of cautious, incremental change ceased to exist, if it had ever really existed at all. The wall fell because of those thousands of pressing bodies, and because of that border guard’s shrug."

The wonderful and timely excerpt above is by Adam Goodheart from an article published in the New York Times Magazine. His book “1861: The Civil War Awakening,” will be published this month.