Cervin, Richard S. 1993. "A critique of Timothy Friberg's dissertation : New Testament Greek word-order in light of discourse considerations." JOTT 6, no. 1: 56-85.

Thanks!

Cognitive analysis of Lineage MMOG, and from the thousands of lines of discourse, she chose one utterance for discourse analysis (big-D, Gee, 1999) and functional analysis (Halliday, 1978). Interpret language for collocational patterns of word choice, cohesion devices, contextualization signals, etc. Big-D discourse analysis looks at how language is used to constitute the speaker’s material and social world, its values, its beliefs, its symbols, its tools, etc.
The utterance is examined here, showing aspects of the player’s identity- expert, old-timer, and his values upheld by all in the Lineage community- to develop a character through experience & wealth, and to create and maintain social relationships. Thus the utterance indicated his allegiance to the group, the shared expectation for collaborative engagement, the fact that the hunt will continue for a while, the complex coordination needed for the hunt.
Collaborative construction of mind, culture and activity.

Lee, H., Plass, J.L., & Homer, B.D. (2006). Optimizing cognitive load for learning from computer-based science simulations. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89, 902–913.

Simulations useful for representing dynamic information, complex concepts, and information that isn’t visible to the unaided eye. Visual complexity of simulations, however, poses significant intrinsic and extrinsic cognitive load issues. This study manipulated load by manipulating visual complexity and type of representation. Four differing displays were compared. The first 2 manipulated complexity of element interactivity (all info on 1 screen, or info displayed over 2 screens). The next 2 manipulated type of representation with one display with symbolic and iconic representations (and all data points graphed, sliders integrated), and the other with only symbolic representations (sliders next to simulation & only last data point graphed). Results of optimal displays (iconic & symbolic, and low element interactivity) show increased transfer and understanding of topic for low prior knowledge learners.

deHaan, J. (2005). Acquisition of Japanese as a Foreign Language Through a Baseball Video Game. Foreign Language Annals, 38, 282–286.

Japanese baseball video game used with intermediate Japanese language learner. The repetitiveness of spoken and printed language was helpful, combined with the controllability (player could pause for reading print, replay), and the contextual clues provided helped. Contextual clues also related to the existence of English loan-words which may have also helped to bootstrap learner’s understanding. Fact that language was presented in 2 simultaneous modalities (spoken and written) also important for reducing load and helping memory. Study had many limitations but indicates possibility of using video games for 2nd language learning.

Review
Jenkins, H. Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked. Published online: http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/impact/myths.html

Great overview of the top 'myths' or beliefs that many people have about video games, and the counter-evidence or the arguments debunking them. These myths primarily focus around the ideas that video games lead to violent, antisocial, desensitized behavior, girls don't play video games, and video games have no educational value.

GDC: Top 10 Video Game Research Findings. Published online: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060330/duffy_01.shtml
Of the top 10 findings, most interesting to me is no. 7 that concerns the development of new input devices and controllers for gameplay- namely the Wii (here called Nintendo’s ‘Revolution’). Challenge for the new interface is to match the gameplay to the input so it’s meaningful- not all games are better played with Wii.

Optional (obligatory for doctoral students):
Plass, J.L., Goldman, R., Flanagan, M., Diamond, J., Song, H., Rosalia, C., & Perlin, K. (2007). RAPUNSEL: How a computer game designed based on educational theory can improve girls’ self-efficacy and self-esteem. Paper presented at the 2007 Annual Meeting for the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Division C-5: Learning Environments, in Chicago.

The Peeps programming environment is gamelike in that programming is required for kids to build and design their player characters, and there is a game-like narrative mechanism of a monster that will gobble up your programming code. This is the first time I’ve read of software for learning how to program that is game-like in its presentation, so this is interesting. Study conducted with a small group but results show some significant gains in self-esteem and programming efficacy for girls in particular.

Extra Article: Mueller, F., Stevens, G., Thorogood, A., O'Brien, S., and Wulf, V. (2007). Sports over a Distance. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, v.11 n.8, 633-645.

Computer Supported Collaborative Sports (CSCS) games are a newly emerging genre which combines the physical gaming interfaces with video & internet technology to allow multiple people to play at a sports activity together.  Authors prototyped and tested 3 different CSCS game/interfaces. “Breakout for Two” based upon soccer and the casual game, ‘breakout’. “Flyguy” which allows players the sensation of flying in a space with other players. “Push n Pull” which allows 2 players to control forces on a shared controller. Latter game is interesting because it tested whether the degree of physical exertion resulted in the feeling of connectedness. Recent research seems to show that the experience of tactile feedback, especially force feedback results in a greater sense of immersion, and some studies indicate that there is a greater sense of social connectedness in collaborative games that provide force feedback. No formal evaluations of “push n Pull” have been conducted yet.  Authors offer some design considerations for these type of CSCS games including the importance of force feedback, the range of movement, and social aspects of interaction.

ar trebui instituit pentru cea mai bună scriitură de bucătărie... mici bilete pe frigider (liste de cumpărături, scrisorele de amor) sau o reţetă de ciorbă scrisă în grabă pe un şerveţel pot fi tot atîtea universuri discursive în care fenomenele literaturii de bucătărie se circumscriu. iată un ardei aici, o felie de caşcaval acolo, o cană cu ceai aburind şi o picătură de miere prelingîndu-se pe buza ei- nimic mai dificil decît a prinde în flagrant această poezie lentă şi etern schimbătoare.

a) investors are influenced by EPR tone;
b) EPR length negatively influences market reactions and;
c) numerical intensity diminishes EPR market impact

In financially critical times such as these, I wonder how the language used in press releases affects investor sentiment. For instance, the press release Fortis issued a few days ago was clearly intended to boost investor confidence but I think the overly positive tone indexed (warranted) fears of a bank run and hence did more damage than good.

Henry, Elaine (2008). Are Investors Influenced By How Earnings Press Releases Are Written? Journal of Business Communication 45 (4): 363-407. DOI: 10.1177/0021943608319388

**UPDATE: Fortis nominates new CEO**

The tone of the press release is remarkably affirmative and confident. Usually, economic press releases make a sport out of hedging truth claims (see McLaren-Hankin 2008, Smart 2006) in an attempt to limit company liability if the unexpected happens (i.e.  if the company's expectations do not materialize). Not here though: phrases like "customer moves have remained limited", "concrete interest of potential buyers is indicated" and "Preparations are made to fully integrate the ABN AMRO Private Banking activities" are clearly targeted at "boost[ing] predictions in the face of apparent contradiction or doubt on the part of others" (Donohue 2006: 204).

Alas, investors were not convinced: Fortis again bled red ink as shares prices continued to fall. Here's my prediction: this storm will not be weathered anytime soon. Expect more Fortis drama.

• Donohue, James P. (2006). How to support a one-handed economist: The role of modalisation in economic forecasting. English for Specific Purposes 25 (2): 200-216. doi:10.1016/j.esp.2005.02.009
• Y. McLaren-Hankin (2008). `We expect to report on significant progress in our product pipeline in the coming year': hedging forward-looking statements in corporate press releases Discourse Studies, 10 (5), 635-654 DOI: 10.1177/1461445608094216
• Smart, Graham (2006). Writing the Economy: Activity, Genre, and Technology in the World of Banking. London: Equinox Publishing.

In a follow up to a previous post on Deleuze and Guattari's third major group of strata - alloplastic strata - I will now critique LacLau and Mouffe's social constructivism. In general, while I see the merits of discourse analysis, I cannot but help feel it is a limited approach to understanding how the world is literally constructed, which is a limitation found in other forms of social constructivism.  The aim of considering Deleuze and Guattari's model, or diagram, of stratification is it offers one a way out of language-dependent understanding of how the world is constructed and a more comprehensive idea of articulation. Hopefully, Deleuze and Guattari can help to demonstrate the limitations of Laclau and Mouffe specifically and social constructivism in general. 

            Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse analysis is an example postmodern theorising that insists on what Derrida terms as the structural undecidability of the social. Laclau and Mouffe do no deny that there is meaning and grounds in ‘social life.’ Instead, their point is the social lacks a foundational centre, or transcendental signifier. This lack within the social allows for an infinite play of meaning and different forms of articulation to co-exist and compete with one another. This is what Laclau and Mouffe, in Derridean terminology, refer to as the structural undecidability of the social.  To demonstrate the structural undecidability of the social Laclau and Mouffe embrace deconstruction as a methodology and adopt the view that everything can be regarded as a text (in the Derridian sense of text). In a deconstructionist reading a double reading of a text is preformed. It is at this point the text is thought to contain a discourse. The first reading of the text is faithful and attempts to follow the dominant interpretation. The second reading is unfaithful; attempting to find what is excluded, neglected, and repressed within the text. It is the second reading that is crucial for undercutting the first reading, demonstrating how the dominant interpretation depends on what it excludes. Ultimately, LacLau and Mouffe’s deconstruction is a textual analysis, and argues that any object can be discursively constructed. How then do Laclau and Mouffe define a discourses?

            Overall, a discourse is defined as a ‘differential ensemble of signifying sequences in which meaning is constantly renegotiated.’ Discourses, in Deleuzian terminology, are regimes of statements that attempt to signify and give meaning to the world. For example, there are neo-liberal discourses that are composed of statements (regimes of signs) that contain views about trade, freedom, human rights, states, and so on. These (multiple) neo-liberal discourses function to give meaning to social life and compete with other discourses to achieve dominance in a discursive field. It is this attempt, and tendency, of discourses to dominant discursive fields that allows Laclau and Mouffe to discuss the practice of articulation.

            On the whole, articulation (and especially hegemonic articulation) seeks to define meaning within a discursive field. Articulation acts to both modify and fixed identities. A Caribbean example can help explain the process of articulation. Imagine a newspaper reporter was asked to compose a summary of the Jamaican sprinters performance in the Beijing Olympics. What is being asked of the reporter is for a regime of statements to be produced that articulate how the sprinters’ performed. LacLau and Mouffe’s structural undecidability and infinite play is evident from there being no ‘correct’ way to articulate the sprinters’ performance. Theoretically, a multitude (even infinite) ways of articulation are available for the reporter. What could emerge is a dominant/hegemonic discourse in the discursive field. For example, the reporter, and other media, might predominantly articulate the success of the Jamaican sprinters through focusing on Usian Bolt. The effect of this dominant discourse would restrict, repress, and neglect other forms of articulation that become marginal discourses. The Jamaican women sprinters, for example, could become marginalised as the dominant articulation of the Jamaican sprinters is a discourse constructed on the ‘nodal point’ of Usain Bolt.

            The aim of Laclau and Mouffe deconstructionist discourse analysis is to reveal the dominate discourse in a discursive field (first reading) and identify what is excluded in the articulations of these dominant discourses (second reading). In terms of media analysis LacLau and Mouffe offer a textual/deconstructionist method that concentrates on the ‘messages’ (articulation) within the media. The major problem Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse analysis is it fails to move beyond a language-centred approach and remains in what Frederic Jameson refers to as the ‘prison-house of language.‘ Despite defenders claiming that Laclau and Mouffe are not reductionists, their approach has little to say about the content (i.e. first articulation) in the stratification process. It is for this reason that LacLau and Mouffe are idealists.

            It would be error to agree with Norman Gera’s claim that LacLau and Mouffe are invoking a shamefaced idealism. However, it would also be an error to claim that LacLau and Mouffe’s discourse analysis is a path towards a non-idealist constructivism. Instead it would be more appropriate to label LacLau and Mouffe as idealist because their discourse analysis concentrates on how interpretations and meanings are given to the world from humans. This is their ‘constructivist idealism’ and is based upon the argument that objects (or the world) do not reveal their meaning to us in a direct and automatic fashion; their meaning has to be given and articulated. Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse analysis is therefore interested on how meaning is socially articulated and given to the world. Unlike Deleuze and Guattari, Laclau and Mouffe are more concerned with discourse than they are about geology (inorganic), biology (organic), and technology (alloplastic). It is for this reason that Laclau and Mouffe are not radical constructivists and remain social constructivists. Their discourse analysis can only explain the construction of the world when there is discourses and articulation of meaning. Deleuze and Guattari radical constructivism moves beyond this limitation, evident in their abstract diagram of stratification, and account for how construction of the world occurs geologically, biologically and socially. A radical constructivist approach, therefore, does not ask what discourses are constructing the social and analyses what processes of stratification are constructing the world.

            An additional problem of Laclau and Mouffe is there structural undecidability and claims of an open (non-totalising) world are constructed on the impossibility of a discourse achieving complete dominance and closure. The objection is not against there position of structural undecidability, or there claim of an open world. Instead, the problem is Laclau and Mouffe cannot explain their positions outside the realms of discourse analysis. It is language, and the impossibility of meaning, that provides Laclau and Mouffe with evidence that the (social) world is structurally undecidable and open. In contrast, Deleuzian complexity theory, as a process ontology, offers a more complete, and convincing, account of structurally undecidability and openness of the world (and not only the social world), which is achieved from the incorporation of non-linear dynamics in DeLanda’s assemblage theory. Arguable, where Laclau and Mouffe only achieve openness and structural undecidability in language, Deleuzian complexity theory achieves a material openness and undecidability. [I explain is this material openness in another section, which will focus on Deleuze and complexity theory]

            Why is this problem? In terms of political transformation Laclau and Mouffe only provide a project that is interested in the politics of meaning. For Laclau and Mouffe the structural undecidability of the social provides the opportunity to transform and challenge dominant discourses. Politics is therefore about a fight over meaning and interpretation. However, LacLau and Mouffe’s (radical) political project is limited from concentrating the significance of meaning. DeLanda provides a critique of such social constructivist projects:

The reason such a change is important for members of a given movement is not because categories directly shape our perception (as social constructivists would have it) but because of unequal legal rights and obligations which are attached by government organisations to a given classification, as well as practices of exclusion, segregation and hoarding of opportunities which sort people out into ranked groups. Thus, activists trying to change a given category are not negotiating over meanings, as if changing the semantic content of a word automatically meant a real change in the opportunities and risks faced by a given social group, but over access to resources (income, education, health, services) and relief from constraints

The point of DeLanda’s critique is that political struggles are largely aimed as transforming the machinic intermingling of bodies and not only caught in a dispute about semantic meaning. Political struggle is not only the construction of new meanings, but, and more importantly, about the construction of new realities achieved from deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation. Struggles about racism, for example, were not only about the meaning of a categorical definition (black/white), but were about constructing new machinic assemblages of bodies where access to resources and relief from constraints was not hierarchically ranked in terms of ones race. It is because Deleuze and Guattari’s account for the intermingly of bodies in alloplastic strata that they offer a way out of LacLau and Mouffe’s politics of meanings, which is a language-oriented approach to politics. Deleuze and Guattari do not deny there are discourses in alloplastic strata (i.e. regime of signs), it is just that Deleuze and Guattari identify that the ‘social’ is more complex than is present in Laclau and Mouffe discourse analysis.

            Following DeLanda critique of social contrustivism I can also identify the constraints of LacLau and Mouffe’s discourse analysis when it comes to analysing technology. In McLuhanian terminology Laclau and Mouffe only provide a means to understand the message (i.e. expression) and not the medium (i.e. content). If the dissertation were to adopt Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse analysis it would fail to move beyond classifying technology as a text. This is a fundamental problem for any research that is attempting to examine technology. Technology, and specifically, media technology, is not merely mediums that disseminate meanings and discourses. It is important to recognize that new media technologies actualize a new reality (e.g. the simulation of virtual reality). Deleuze, in his book on foucault, refers to this as the construction of new visibilities. 

            Overall, Laclau and Mouffe provide an effective framework for achieving a discourse analysis of media. In terms of alloplastic strata, to a certain extent, Laclau and Mouffe can help for analysing the expressive components of alloplastic strata, providing the second articulation is a discourse. However, as the Google chapter illustrates, the second articulation is not always in the form of a discourse. It is at this point that Laclau and Mouffe ideas of articulation become ineffective and limited in comparison to Deleuze and Guattari’s defining articulation as (at least) a double articulation process. In conjunction, Laclau and Mouffe are unhelpful for understanding the content (first articulation) of alloplastic strata. Their language-centred discourse analysis fails to provide a method for analysing (media) technology and how it literally constructs the world from focusing on the messages and not the (material) mediums (e.g. the symbiotic relationships/assemblages formed with technology).  

ps. This is in no way related to those of you who kindly offered to help answer some Scripture questions I've been pondering recently. I eagerly await your input, and thank those of you who've already responded. What I'm talking about here is the kind of face-to-face conversation, and focus on Bible study, cultural analysis and philosophy, mentoring, etc. that's commonly available at L'Abri from morning until evening. What I wouldn't give for that kind of freedom again!

Often times "Dynamic" translations are viewed as dumbed down. This is often on the basis that their reading level is lower than the more "literal" translations. But could it be that often times (though not always) the reason that the reading level is lower is not because of translators dumbing down the text, but rather that the "Dynamic" translations are simply better and less awkward English. A great example of this is very easily seen in TC's blind comparison. In that case, the unknown dynamic translation (which is really the TNIV) is easier to read and not dumbed down at all in comparison with the unknown literal translation (the NRSV).

The terms "Literal" and "Dynamic" are thrown around in ways that they shouldn't be. More often than not, literal really just means awkward (and often times over against accurate), What should literal mean? Well how about the maintaining in the translation of metaphor and imagery, word play, word order (when it does not violate the semantics of the clause, sentence or discourse as a whole - Psalm 1.1 in the KJV tradition), and the linguistic register (kind of like literary ability) of the author? It should also accurately transfer into the target language the rhetorical strategies and discourse structure of the author.

I can tell you right off the bat that with the exception of maintaining metaphor, imagery and word order (often to an incomprehensible extreme) the NASB fails on most of these.

And in fact translations like the TNIV tend to get the most of these done much better though I by no means claim that they are perfect. As far as I know, linguistic register is never translated. It should be though. I want to see John's very simple Greek shown through in simple English and I want to see Hebrews' rich and complex Greek shine through the English text as well. I haven't yet. But I want to. One of the problems is that such translation requires an incredible amount of sensitivity in both Greek and English - and perhaps even a linguistic awareness of English beyond simply native speaker intuition.

So there are some thoughts to chew on. I hope my summer away hasn't caused my English bible translation readers to disappear...

“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”, Noam Chomsky

The most important system of control of discourse working in the moslem societies is “prohibition”. An imagined ‘Islam’ has emerged as the single most important tool for censorship in Islamic world. When it involves other issues like “blasphemy” one could be certain that no voice will ever emerge in opposition to censorship. This is one of the most suffocating experiences to live in when those who struggled all their lives for change and freedom appear to be on board with the tyrants. It is precisely this “ideological gap” within the progressive and modernist moslem establishment which let people like Ayan Hirsi Ali to emerge!

Heroine of the “new Right”, its fashionable these days to slander and dismiss Ali in almost all progressive circles of Europe. The problem unfortunately will not disappear by this continuous “Tabbara” on her. The lacuna within the progressive left ,which has sealed its lips in name of “anti imperialism” on fundamentalism, freedom of expression, and Islamic roots of violence and subjugation of women, has to be filled. The alliances from Lebanon to Islamabad with Islamic fundamentalism have to be broken and progressive position be taken on feminism and other “transitory demands”.

Keeping the Neo-conservative political agenda aside ,Ali stands out as a bold and eloquent lady who has dared to break the silence on Islamic gendricide. “The caged Virgin” and “The Son Factory” stand out as phenomenal contribution on developing a radical feminist discourse in moslem world. The article I have chosen present the core argument of the progressive moslem left , the argument of “moderate moslem majority” - that “the moderates” are silent .

I recall a line: “Since the holocaust, you know what the Jews fear the most?” ” The Silence!”

Queer As Folk

*************************************

Islam’s Silent Moderates

Ayan Hirsi Ali

In the last few weeks, in three widely publicized episodes, we have seen Islamic justice enacted in ways that should make Muslim moderates rise up in horror.

A twenty-year-old woman from Qatif, Saudi Arabia, reported that she had been abducted by several men and repeatedly raped. But judges found the victim herself to be guilty. Her crime is called “mingling”: when she was abducted, she was in a car with a man not related to her by blood or marriage, and in Saudi Arabia that is illegal. Last month, she was sentenced to six months in prison and two hundred lashes with a bamboo cane.

Two hundred lashes are enough to kill a strong man. Women usually receive no more than thirty lashes at a time, which means that for seven weeks the “girl from Qatif,” as she is usually described in news articles, will dread her next session with Islamic justice. When she is released, her life will certainly never return to normal: already there have been reports that her brother has tried to kill her because her “crime” has tarnished her family’s honor.

We also saw Islamic justice in action in Sudan, when a fifty-four-year-old British teacher named Gillian Gibbons was sentenced to fifteen days in jail before the government pardoned her this week; she could have faced forty lashes. When she began a reading project with her class involving a teddy bear, Gibbons suggested the children choose a name for it. They chose Muhammad; she let them do it. This was deemed to be blasphemy.

Then there is Taslima Nasreen, the forty-five-year-old Bangladeshi writer who bravely defends women’s rights in the Muslim world. Forced to flee Bangladesh, she has been living in India. But Muslim groups there want her expelled, and one has offered five hundred thousand rupees for her head. In August, she was assaulted by Muslim militants in Hyderabad, and in recent weeks she has had to leave Kolkata and then Rajasthan. Nasreen’s visa expires next year, and she fears she will not be allowed to live in India again.

It is often said that Islam has been “hijacked” by a small extremist group of radical fundamentalists. The vast majority of Muslims are said to be moderates. But where are the moderates? Where are the Muslim voices raised over the terrible injustice of incidents like these? How many Muslims are willing to stand up and say, in the case of the girl from Qatif, that this manner of justice is appalling, brutal, and bigoted–and that no matter who said it was the right thing to do and how long ago it was said, this should no longer be done?

Usually, Muslim groups like the Organization of the Islamic Conference are quick to defend any affront to the image of Islam. The organization, which represents fifty-seven Muslim states, sent four ambassadors to the leader of my political party in the Netherlands asking him to expel me from parliament after I gave a newspaper interview in 2003 noting that, by Western standards, some of Muhammad’s behavior would be unconscionable.

A few years later, Muslim ambassadors to Denmark protested the cartoons of Muhammad and demanded that their perpetrators be prosecuted. But while the incidents in Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and India have done more to damage the image of Islamic justice than a dozen cartoons depicting Muhammad, the organizations that lined up to protest the hideous Danish offense to Islam are quiet now.

I wish there were more Islamic moderates. For example, I would welcome some guidance from that famous Muslim theologian of moderation, Tariq Ramadan. But when there is true suffering, real cruelty in the name of Islam, we hear, first, denial from all these organizations that are so concerned about Islam’s image. We hear that violence is not in the Quran, that Islam means peace, that this is a hijacking by extremists and a smear campaign, and so on. But the evidence mounts to the contrary.

Islamic justice is a proud institution, one to which more than a billion people subscribe, at least in theory, and in the heart of the Islamic world it is the law of the land. But take a look at the verse above: more compelling even than the order to flog adulterers is the command that the believer show no compassion. It is this order to choose Allah above his sense of conscience and compassion that imprisons the Muslim in a mindset that is archaic and extreme.

If moderate Muslims believe there should be no compassion shown to the girl from Qatif, then what exactly makes them so moderate? When a moderate Muslim’s sense of compassion and conscience collides with matters prescribed by Allah, he should choose compassion. Unless that happens much more widely, a moderate Islam will remain wishful thinking.

Miss Ali was born in an influential Somili family, her father was a major political figure who resisted the Marxist dictatorship in Somalia, She was raised a devout moslem and has studied at a Saudi religious school as well, she escaped to Europe to avoid a forced marriage and abuse. She studied dutch and Political Science in Netherlands and soon rose to prominence . She was elected to the Dutch Parliament on a Liberal Party ticket, initially she was in Labour which she soon left due to “Left’s silence” of Islamic fundamentalism. Deeply influenced by “European Enlightenment” she came out strongly against organized religions including Islam and Christianity. She wrote the screenplay of VanGoh’s movie “Submission” that made her a target of extremists. These event made her closer to the Neo-Conservative right. She is fellow of the conservative American think tank “American Enterprise Institute”. An out spoken feminist and secular humanist ,Ali has received many prestigious honors as well as death threats. She is included in Time magazine 100 most influential thinkers. Her work on comparison of thought of John Stuart Mill and Islam and her defense of European Enlightenment as “collective human asset” are especially important.

1. Of the three great systems of exclusion governing discourse — prohibited words, the division of madness and the will to truth ———”

“I believe we must resolve ourselves to accept three decisions which our current thinking rather tends to resist, and which belong to the three groups of function I have just mentioned: to question our will to truth; to restore to discourse its character as an event; to abolish the sovereignty of the signifier…. One can straight away distinguish some of the methodological demands they imply. A principle of reversal, first of all…. Next, then, the principle of discontinuity ….” Michel Foucault I am planning to do all this , I am trying to bring forward the “prohibited voices”, those which have been totally eclipsed in the society by the dominant discourse. This is not “endorsing” one and rejecting “others”, rather, its simply a act of breathing , an act of subversion ,of saying what is not pleasant to hear, Its simply an act of living in the rotten stagnant conformity. Due to the overtly political nature of “war on terror”, the Islamism has suffered a qualitative change , it has taken the postmodern shape. The Progressive Islamist circles have in turn become “Post-Islamists”, the result is emergence of a discourse which is reactionary, anti modern and some times overtly racist and fascist.

Islam has nothing to do with violence

Islam needs no re-thinking or change

Its all Jewish conspiracy

Its all America’s fault.

This article by Ziauddin Sardar tend to expose the contradictions in the Islamist discourse, the assumptions about Islam which have been taught as “laws”. “The demolition of Babri Mosque” in India and alleged grand conspiracy to demolish “Dome of Rock” in Jerusalem have been used as “validaters” in Islamic discourse to prove “unity of whole world” against Islam. To destroy Islamic Identity , culture and existence. In the racist Islamist zeal no one mentions the demolition of Muhammed’s history from Saudi Arabia. Romila Thapar once commented that religion extremism is always “ahistorc” and it later becomes “Anti historic”. Sardar touches on the issue to “destroying history” by Islamists. On the whole this article too subverts and challange the dominant discourse on Islam and Islam’s political identity in Modern times. History is so much dreaded by Islamists because a simple historical analysis will show that theological roots of Islamism are not in Islam but in the Kharjites heresy and European Fascism.

Shaheryar Ali

The Struggle For Islam’s Soul

By Ziauddin Sardar

At about the time bombs were going off in London two weeks ago, bulldozers were demolishing sacred historic sites in Mecca and, in Delhi, a group of women was demonstrating against an “inhuman” fatwa ordering a rape victim to renounce her husband. Three seemingly unconnected violent acts. But they weave a thread highlighting a question we Muslims just cannot ignore: Why have we made Islam so violent? Within hours of the London atrocity, Muslim groups throughout Britain condemned the bombing, declaring in unequivocal terms that such acts had nothing to do with Islam. “Religious precepts,” declared the Muslim Council of Britain, “cannot be used to justify such crimes, which are completely contrary to our teaching and practice.” The eminently sensible Imam Abdul Jalil Sajid, chairman of the Muslim Council for Religious and Racial Harmony U.K., announced: “No school of Islam allows the targeting of civilians or the killing of innocents. Indiscriminate, senseless and targeted killing has no justification in Islam.” The tenor of these statements is: These are the acts of pathologically mad people; Islam has nothing to do with it. But Islam has everything to do with it. As Dr. Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, director of the Muslim Institute, points out: “The terrorists are using Islamic sources to justify their actions. How can one then say it has nothing to do with Islam?” It is true that the vast majority of Muslims abhor violence and terrorism, and that the Qur’an and various schools of Islamic law forbid the killing of innocent civilians. It is true, as the vast majority of Muslims believe, that the main message of Islam is peace. Nevertheless, it is false to assume the Qur’an or Islamic law cannot be used to justify barbaric acts. The terrorists are a product of a specific mindset that has deep roots in Islamic history. They are nourished by an Islamic tradition that is intrinsically inhuman and violent in its rhetoric, thought and practice. They are provided solace and spiritual comfort by scholars, who use the Qur’an and Islamic law to justify their actions and fan the hatred. As a Muslim, I am deeply upset by the attacks, the more so now I know they were the work of British Muslims. But, as a Muslim, I also have a duty to recognize the Islamic nature of the problem that the terrorists have thrown up. They are acting in the name of my religion; it thus becomes my responsibility critically to examine the tradition that sustains them. The question of violence per se is not unique to Islam. All those who define themselves as the totality of a religion or an ideology have an innate tolerance for and tendency toward violence. It is the case in all religions and all ideologies through every age. But this does not lessen the responsibility on Muslims in Britain, or around the world, to be judicious, to examine themselves, their history and all it contains to redeem Islam from the pathology of this tradition. To deny that the terrorists are a product of Islamic history and tradition is more than complacency. It is a denial of responsibility, a denial of what is really happening in our communities. It is a refusal to live in the real world. The tradition that nourishes the mentality of the extremists has three inherent characteristics. First, it is ahistoric. It abhors history and drains it of all humanity. Islam, as a religion interpreted in the lives and thoughts of people called Muslims, is not something that unfolded in history with all its human strengths and weaknesses, but is a utopia that exists outside time. Hence it has no notion of progress, moral development or human evolution. What happened in Mecca earlier this month illustrates this point well. During the past 50 years, the holy cities of Mecca and Medina have suffered incalculable violence. More than 300 historical sites have been levelled systematically. Only a few historic buildings remain in Mecca — and these are about to be demolished. “We are witnessing now the last few moments of the history of Mecca,” says Sami Angawi, a Saudi expert on the Islamic architecture of the Holy City. “Its layers of history are being bulldozed for a parking lot.” Angawi, who has fought to conserve the historic sites of the Holy City for more than 25 years, has no doubt what is largely to blame: Wahhabism, the dominant religious tradition of Saudi Arabia. The Wahhabis, he says, “have not allowed preservation of old buildings, especially those related to the Prophet.” Why? Because other Muslims will relate to the history of the Prophet, and they will then see him as a man living in a particular time and space that placed particular demands on him and forced him to act in particular ways. The Wahhabis want to universalize and eternalize every act of the Prophet. For them, the context is not only irrelevant but dangerous. It has to be expunged. What this means is that the time of the Prophet has to be constantly recreated, both in thought and action. It is perfect time, frozen and eternalized. Because it is perfect, it cannot be improved: It is the epitome of morality, incapable of growth. Second, this ideal tradition is monolithic. It does not recognize, understand or appreciate a contrary view. Those who express an alternative opinion are seen as apostates, collaborators or worse. The latest cause célèbre of Islamic law in India demonstrates what I mean. Imrana Bibi, the wife of a poor rickshaw puller in Uttar Pradesh, was raped by her father-in-law. The religious scholars of Deoband, an influential seminary with Wahhabi tendencies, issued a fatwa: her marriage is nullified, her husband is forbidden to her forever, she will have to separate for life from him and her five children. The All India Muslim Personal Law Board endorsed the “punishment.” When Bibi herself, along with women’s rights groups, complained about the double injustice, the clerics at Deoband declared: “She had a physical relationship with her father-in-law. It does not matter whether it was consensual or forced. She cannot live with her husband. Any Muslim who opposes our fatwa is not a true Muslim and is betraying Islam.” So, no complaint or opposition is allowed. A perfect tradition can only produce perfect fatwas. And those who are seen as betraying Islam can themselves become subjects of other perfect fatwas. As a tradition outside history, it does not recognize the diversity of Islam. The humanist or rationalist tradition of Islam, or the great mystical tradition, thus appear as a dangerous deviations. In Bangladesh the Wahhabis and Deobandis are terrorising and burning the mosques of the Ahmadiyya sect, which does not see the prophet Muhammad as the last Prophet, and insist that Ahmadis should be declared “non-Muslims”. In Pakistan, the Sunnis are killing Shias because they do not see them as legitimate Muslims. Ditto in Iraq. In Algeria the Armed Islamic Group openly declared that the entire “Algerian nation” was deviant and should be killed. As for Saudi Arabia, you cannot even take a commentary or translation of the Qur’an into the country that does not follow the prescribed line. Notice, also, that this tradition has a very specific view of sin. A perfect tradition must lead to perfect Muslims, who do not and cannot commit sin. Those who commit sin — that is, disagree or deviate — cannot be Muslims. Those outside this tradition are sinners and have to be brought to the Straight Path. The victims of sin themselves become sinners who have to be punished. Third, this tradition is aggressively self-righteous; and insists on imposing its notion of righteousness on others. It legitimizes intolerance and violence by endlessly quoting the famous verse from the Qur’an that asks the believers “to do good and prevent evil deeds.” The Bali bombers justified their actions with this verse. The Islamic Defenders Front, based in Indonesia, frequently burns and destroys cafes, cinemas and discos — places it considers to be sites of immoral or immodest behaviour. The hated religious police in Saudi Arabia are on the streets every day imposing a “moral code” (mainly on women). In Pakistan, the religious scholars succeeded in banning mixed (male and female) marathons. Just where does this tradition come from? It can be traced right back to the formative phase of Islam. The prophet Muhammad was succeeded by four caliphs who are known as the “Rightly Guided” because of their close friendship and relationship with the Prophet. Muslims regard the period of their rule in idealized terms — as the best that human endeavour can achieve. However, this was also a period of dissent, wars and rebellions. Three of the four Rightly Guided caliphs were murdered. One particular set of rebels, responsible for the murder of Ali, the fourth caliph, was known as the Kharjites. The Kharjites were a puritan sect which believed that history had come to an end after the revelation made to the last Prophet. From now on, there could not be any debate or compromise on any question: “The decision is God’s alone.” They were prone to extremist proclamations, denouncing Ali as well as Othman, the third caliph, and pronouncing everyone who did not agree with their point of view as infidel and outside the law. The Kharjites developed a radically different interpretation of what it means to be a Muslim. To be a Muslim, they argued, is to be in a perfect state of soul. Someone in that state cannot commit a sin and engage in wrongdoing. Sin, therefore was a contradiction for a true Muslim — it nullified the believer and demonstrated that inwardly he was an apostate. Thus, anyone who did any wrong was not really a Muslim. He could be put to death. Indeed, the Kharjites believed that all non-Kharjite Muslims were really apostates who were legitimate targets for violence. Although the Kharjites were eventually suppressed, their thought has recurred in Islamic history with cyclic regularity. Like their predecessors, the neo-Kharjites have no doubt that their identity is shaped by the best religion with the finest arrangements and precepts for all aspects of human existence; and there can be no deviation from the path. Those who do not agree are at best lesser Muslims and at worst legitimate targets for violence. In their rhetoric all is sacred, nothing secular and retribution is the paramount duty. “Since they have left humanity and history out of the equation,” says Dr Najah Kadhim, director of Islam21, a global network of Muslim intellectuals, “they have no conscience. No notion of guilt or remorse. Since the idea that they are perfect is part of their psychological make-up, they can do anything with impunity.” Injustice and violence are inbuilt in their thought and tradition, which, under certain circumstances, is transformed into undiluted fascism. We saw this most clearly in the case of the Taliban. So it just won’t do to say that these people are “not Muslims”, as the Muslim Council of Britain seems to suggest. We must acknowledge that the terrorists, and their neo-Kharjite tradition, are products of Islamic history. Only by recognising this brutal fact would we realize that the fight against terrorism is also an internal Muslim struggle within Islam. Indeed, it is a struggle for the very soul of Islam. Yet this struggle, as Dr Siddiqui points out, “cannot be shaped on the lines of “the war on terror.” The “war on terror” feeds the monster what it most desires: violent reaction to sustain the cycle of violence. “This is why Iraq has now become a breeding ground for the neo-Kharjite philosophy,” he argues. The war on terror, in fact, cannot be a war at all. It has to be a reasoned engagement with the politics of tradition. If Islam has been construed as the problem, then Islam is also the essential ingredient in the solution. “The best way to fight the Kharjite tradition is with the humanistic and rationalist traditions of Islam,” says Dr Kadhim. “This is how they were defeated in Islamic history. This is how we will defeat them now.” If Muslims do not take on the challenge, they cede the initiative to those who have misconceived the problem and accepted a military strategy that is no solution. And that will make us all prey to more violence

Published on Jul. 22, 2005 ]]> http://sherryx.wordpress.com/?p=51 Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:55:33 +0000 sherryx http://sherryx.el.wordpress.com/2008/09/09/a-damascene-conversion-subverting-the-discourse-of-exclusion-2/ Discourse” is nothing but all “written and verbal communication”. In line of Gramsci and later Foucault we have to understand “discourse” as “institutionalized” way of thinking, or in words of Judith Butler “limits of acceptable” speech. Its these limits which subverted in order to reach a true libertarian discourse. The discourse is controlled by means of “exclusion”, no other opinion simply exists. Foucault writes:

“Of the three great systems of exclusion governing discourse — prohibited words, the division of madness and the will to truth ———”

“——One can straight away distinguish some of the methodological demands they imply. A principle of reversal, first of all…. Next, then, the principle of discontinuity ….”

I am planning to do all this , i am trying to bring forward the “prohibited voices”, those which have been totally eclipsed in the society by the dominant discourse. This is not “endorsing” one and rejecting “others”, rather, its simply a act of breathing , an act of subversion ,of saying what is not pleasant to hear, Its simply an act of living in the rotten stagnant conformity.

One of the great “prohibiter” is “Islam” and “Honour of Prophet”, this brilliant article by Aatish Taseer tends to highlight the aspects of these two ideas which usually remain suppressed . A frank simple report but the one which shakes a lot of certainties. It was published in “Prospects”. The prose is enchanting, Taseer has a innocent frankness which simply is enlightening

“The Fastest Growing Religion of the World”

“Our soul, our blood, kind and gentle is our Prophet.”

A Damascene Conversion

Aatish Taseer

The last time I saw Isak Nilsen, we were eating okra and mutton in my flat near the diplomatic quarter of Damascus. The 22-year old Norwegian, who had been in Syria for four and a half months, seemed impatient to go before a sheikh and make the simple testimony—“There is no God but God and Muhammad is his Prophet”—that would introduce him to the society of the believers. Three days later he was on a plane back to Oslo, evacuated from a country where the faith put him at risk.

Isak’s Christianity was different from most of my European contemporaries. He was a theology student on his way to a career in the Norwegian church. He really believed that Christ had died on the cross for our sins and was the son of God. Yet now Isak was on the verge of converting to Islam, with its “clarity,” its “completeness” and its willingness to enter spheres of public life from which his church had long since retreated. Two days after our lunch the faith he was about to embrace did enter public life, but it was an entry far more violent than he would have liked. The same words that were to have been his conversion testimony had become the slogans of an angry mob attacking his embassy, burning his flag and threatening his friends.

For the past six weeks I had been in Damascus talking to young people about the place of religion in their lives. The Syrian capital is, to those interested in understanding Islam and Arabic, the key—what Boston is to liberal secular types. Abu Nour University, which reached its zenith under the late grand mufti of Syria, Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro, is a favoured destination for students from non-Arab Muslim backgrounds hoping to gain or regain knowledge of the religion. On an average day Chechens, Indonesians, Pakistanis and British and American Muslims crowd the university’s corridors on their way to Koran and Arabic classes. The approach to Abu Nour is through a famous Damascus souk dotted with 13th and 14th-century minarets. Nearing the giant, still-new marble edifice, one begins to see bearded, robed and veiled figures from across the globe, standing out among the Syrians no less than Ella, my tall, blonde girlfriend.

The more secular Damascus University also attracts many foreigners for whom Islam holds a strong appeal, and it was among these students that I first experienced the city. I arrived in Damascus on a rainy Christmas eve after a gruelling bus journey from Aleppo, in northern Syria. I went to a flat in the embassy district that my friend Chad shared with Isak, the Norwegian student. Over the coming six weeks, Isak and I came to know each other reasonably well. That night he and a Norwegian friend of his were tucking into salmon and a bowl of gløgg, a Scandinavian winter drink. The three others in the room were my friend Chad—in Damascus to improve his Arabic—and two South Africans of south Asian extraction, brother and sister. The sister, Semeya, wore a headscarf and was bewitchingly pretty.

Over the gløgg, Isak mentioned his plans for a career in the church. Inspired by his vocation and by being in the city where Paul had converted to Christianity, I suggested that we go out, despite the bad weather, to find a midnight mass. The two Norwegians were fired by the idea and we set out in the direction of the old city, passing Straight Street, the street with a kink described in Acts as “a street called Straight,” a remark which Mark Twain cites as the only bit of facetiousness in the Bible. Such is the religious diversity of Damascus that we confused Catholic churches with Orthodox ones, Greek ones with Armenian ones, and wound up, well past midnight, cold, wet and unblessed.

Over the next few days I spent a lot of time in this curious milieu with Chad and his circle, discovering the hamams and souks of the city that I was to live in for the next two months. It took me a few days to realise that there was an Islamic current running through many in the group. It was hippy Islam, if such a thing is possible. The gatherings of Chad and his friends were inter-religious, multi-ethnic and tediously respectful, but Islam was always present. It was in the sparseness of people’s flats, the fondness for facial hair in the boys, the studied, serene voices and the abundance of fruit juice. I quickly grew tired of it, and after a dry Christmas dinner I befriended Even Nord, Isak’s friend, a Norwegian with a glint in his eye and knowledge of the Journalists’ Club, a place where we could get a drink.

Like schoolchildren, Even and I had given the others the slip and were heading off for a beer when Semeya, the South African beauty, found us and pulled Even aside, appearing to scold him in low tones. She knew where we were going and felt “uncomfortable” about its environment. It was fascinating to watch her, almost self-consciously demure under her headscarf and long eyelashes; I wondered what emotional blackmail she was employing and to what spiritual end. At last, after withholding his purpose and describing the place as a cafeteria, Even managed to extricate himself.

But the Journalists’ Club is not a cafeteria. It is a large gloomy room with hideous blue and gold interiors that derives such popularity it has from being the sole drinking establishment in that part of town. Even and I settled down under the fluorescent glare and had just ordered a beer and a glass of wine when Semeya appeared again, looking like a terrified, hunted creature. She quickly came over to our table, fussing to Even about how uncomfortable she was. “I just don’t feel right,” she whispered. She addressed hardly a word to me and spoke to Even in Arabic, which I don’t understand. Then she produced a sheet of Arabic verbs and studied them silently for a while; and then as quickly as she had come she was gone.

It was over a drink with Even that I became aware of the strange appeal of both Islam and Semeya in his life. “In the west, we are all about rights,” he said, “but we have forgotten about limits.” He said he and Isak had both been impressed by Semeya’s spiritual quest. “She’s here only to develop her relationship with God,” he said, admiringly. It sounded like she had seduced them both with her piety.

What had seemed to me a fine example of female guile was to Even evidence of how Islam curbed the excesses of modern western life. “The only immorality in the west these days,” he said, “is to speak of morality. I am so tired of this hedonistic lifestyle, I want something simple.” He was blond, athletic and handsome, and knew a fair amount about Norwegian death metal music; I expect he also knew something about the western excesses of which he spoke. But I didn’t share his pessimism, and after a drink or two we parted ways. It was my first taste of this kind of talk. I had no idea how much more was coming my way.

The next day I left town and went travelling for two weeks with Ella. When I returned, I ran into Chad and Isak at an estate agent, where I was looking for a flat. Isak had his parents with him. The Eid holiday was beginning and they were about to set off around Syria. I learned from Chad that Isak, before the arrival of his parents, had been travelling with Semeya.

Once I had settled into an old 1920s flat, not far from the French embassy, I asked Even to take me to Abu Nour, the university where international Islam broods high up the hill overlooking Syria’s capital. I thought Even would be the perfect guide to this mysterious, slightly intimidating quarter. He spoke good Arabic; was, like Isak, his friend and apparent rival for Semeya’s affections, increasingly Muslim; and with a peculiar charisma moved through the dustier parts of the city like a favourite blond son. After lunch one day, he and I set out through the Souk Jouma. As we made our way past stalls full of dates, olives, meat and blood oranges, past electrical repair shops, camel butchers and a man drying trotters with a blowtorch, I caught my first glimpse of Abu Nour students. There were small Indonesians with conical hats and wispy beards, vast African women in coloured veils and pale Europeans with red facial hair. The scene culminated in a small square from where Abu Nour’s white minarets were clearly visible. The square was packed with internet cafés, Islamic literature and a store called Shukr specialising in stylish Islamic clothes for western markets.

We were looking for Tariq, a fix-it man known to all the new arrivals. We found him on one corner of the square, a big, meaty figure with a friendly manner. “Where are you from, brother?” he asked. “I welcome people from every country because everyone was very nice to me when I was in Europe. I can help you, brother, and unlike a lot of guides, I don’t ask for your money. What do you want? Arabic? Koran? A lot of people come here from all over the world—Africa, England, Pakistan—to learn about Islam.” Unlike a lot of guides who say they don’t want money, Tariq truly didn’t, which made me even more nervous. In a country where it is rumoured that 10 per cent of the population are informers for the mukhabarat, I was concerned that Tariq was making his money elsewhere. It was Thursday and we agreed to meet the next day before Friday prayers.

On the way back, Even suddenly grabbed my arm and we slipped into a side street off the main souk. Even knocked on a black metal door and after a short wait, a small Asian man in grey Arab robes opened the door. He hugged and kissed Even profusely. He welcomed us into a sitting room and then into a further room, which looked like a tiny presidential office. Above a big desk and chair there hung, on one side, the Syrian flag with a picture of the president, and on the other a flag I didn’t recognise: red stripes and yellow stars and moons on a black background. We were in the headquarters of the Pattani United Liberation Organisation, of which I had never heard, and the little man was its president in Syria. Cakes and soft drinks arrived and the man unburdened all the details of the plight of his people in southern Thailand. He produced his wife and a little baby a few minutes later. Then he insisted we watch a film about a massacre in Pattani, in which a soft-spoken American narrator told of the horrors of Thaksin Shinawatra’s regime in Thailand. When it was over, the little man said, “Pattani want peace, but Shinawatra want to make war.” At this he laughed maniacally and pointed to the wallpaper on his computer. “It say, ‘Thailand will be destroyed and Pattani will rise.’” Again he laughed his hellish laugh and we took our leave, Abu Nour and its environs now seeming to me like some rabbit warren of extras from a jihad film.

The next morning Tariq took me to the translation room of the mosque at Abu Nour, where you can listen to the sermons and prayers in a number of languages. On the way I confessed to him that I didn’t know how to pray. “No problem brother, we will teach you,” he said. We entered the great building with hundreds of other people. Tariq led me up a few flights of stairs on to a balcony, from where I could see hundreds of white caps below. I followed Tariq into an annexe where a handful of students were watching a sermon on television. Tariq sat me down next to a short, south Asian brother dressed in white. “Please brother, teach him to pray,” said Tariq, and with that he left. I greeted Mohammad, who turned out to be from Australia, and thanked him for his help as he passed me some headphones. When the sermon had finished, he suggested that we do our ablutions.

I followed Mohammad into the washing area. He taught me how to wash Islamically: my hands up to my elbows, my face, a portion of my hair and my feet up to my ankles. He seemed to notice that I was less diligent than he was, and he said, quietly: “The Prophet used to do it three times.” When we returned to the translation room, a few robed, bearded figures had come on to the stage. Mohammad whispered to me that Abu Nour often had guest speakers, and that today they had the grand muftis of Syria and Bosnia, as well as the Syrian minister of culture.

I put on my headphones and started to listen to an English translation of the words of Salah Kuftaro, director of the university and son of the former grand mufti. His speech, like those that followed—except for the grand mufti of Bosnia, who preached the need for understanding—was all incendiary politics. Each time the formula was the same: Islam is a religion of peace, tolerance and moderation, they would say (as if answering a counter-claim); a reference to the glory of the Islamic past and the need to guard against the enemies of Islam; then a congratulation to the present regime for doing so. Kuftaro finished by saying: “It is easy to get depressed in these times, to see the forces against Islam. The Islamic world is fragmented and divided. It is so because of the west and the influence of its ideas. First they rob us economically, then they rob our land, and once they have done that, they rob us culturally.”

After he had finished, we prayed. I had a rough idea of what to do and managed to get by without drawing too much attention to myself. When it was over, I was introduced to some of the brothers from Britain and America. Mohammad suggested I join them at the Kentucky Fried Chicken that evening, but I declined. As I walked back through the souk, I felt drained. The speeches had been so full of grievance, so closed to the idea of real reconciliation. I knew that in a country where the discussion of politics is forbidden, the mosques were the only outlet for these issues, but I still wondered why the preachers were so reliant on confrontation to get the message across.

I spent several days meeting privately with some of the people I had met at the mosque, trying to understand what had made them give up their lives in the west and turn to Islam. Simplicity, clearing away the clutter of modern life, was a big theme. Completeness was another: a single divine philosophy managing every aspect of life and conduct. Routine was another still: praying and fasting ordered the mayhem. And identity: feeling part of a universal brotherhood where other identities had failed. There were brothers like Fuad, a British Asian from Doncaster who had escaped his corporate job in Bristol to come to Abu Nour. “It was so grey,” he said. “The drive to work every morning, operating on mechanised time, arriving to find you have 200 emails. I realised that to succeed in that world, in the corporation, you had to serve the corporation. And for what? For money? Instead I chose to submit to something true, something with meaning.” There were many like Fuad.

Since arriving in Istanbul three months earlier, beginning a journey through the Dar al-Islam—land of the believers—that would also take me back to my own long-obscured Islamic roots in Pakistan, I had seen how Islamic “completeness” informed ideas of language, science and history. Khaldun, my Arabic teacher in Damascus, who was desperate to move to America or Britain to convey the word of Muhammad, showed me how Islam lived even in the pages of his English-language textbook. He pointed to a small multiple-choice exercise in which the author had suggested that in order not to be rude, it was better to say someone was not handsome rather than that he was ugly, or to say that someone was not interesting rather than that he was boring. “See,” he shouted, “this is like Islam! English is a moral language.” Zahir, the translator of the Friday sermon at Abu Nour, had shown me how science came from the Koran. Nadir, my guide and translator, showed me that history itself came from Islam. In a frustrated moment, he said: “We used to have a great history. Not before Islam of course, but since.” By “we” he meant Syrians, who a mile away had founded the Christian church, and who, a millennium before that, had invented the alphabet.

“This land has had a great history for thousands of years that pre-dates Islam,” I said.

“Yes,” Nadir answered, “an immoral history.”

I had never heard of such a thing, but Nadir’s idea, like Khaldun’s, was part of Islam’s all-encompassing nature. If you had it, you needed nothing else. “If I find one thing,” Nadir said, “one thing that the Koran doesn’t cover, I will renounce the faith.” But Nadir could never find that one thing because Islam served as the source of everything. Unlike Even, I was beginning to feel that this, not the hedonism of the west, was the real problem of limits.

It was during these disheartening discussions with Syrians and visitors alike that I saw Isak again. We arranged to have lunch in the old city, in a restaurant that had once been a stable. I brought Ella, and Isak was with Chad. I hadn’t seen Isak since that time outside the real estate office. His friendly face, supported by a physical and emotional solidity, made him the sort of person people like to trust. Seeing Isak, I had a thought I’d had before: he would make such a good priest.

“Does studying theology usually lead to a career in the Norwegian church?” I asked him.

“Yes, after the MA, which includes a year of training, you become eligible to join the church,” he said.

“Is that a route you plan to take?” Ella asked.

“Yes, well, actually…” he said, and then turned to Chad with a coy smile, as if about to make a confession of love for his friend, asking, “I can tell them, right?”

Chad shrugged his shoulders. “It’s up to you…”

“Actually,” Isak said, turning to Ella and me, “I’ve become more interested in Islam.”

“What has interested you?” I said.

“The fact that it handles politics more openly,” he answered. This aspect of Islam was precisely what was putting me off, but Isak felt that in the over-secularised environment of Europe, the church had lost its role as a forum on political issues. “Islam,” he continued, “discusses politics more honestly.” He also emphasised that he liked the prayers five times a day, that the faith had a tangible quality and ruled over all aspects of its adherents’ lives. I had heard this a million times before, but never from a potential priest and someone used to the vast freedoms of Scandinavia.

So great was Isak’s passion about Islam that Ella finally asked: “Would you think of converting?”

“I am actually in the process now,” came the reply.

I was sure the seductions of Semeya had played some part in this, although Chad assured me later that this was not the case. As I spoke more to Isak, he mentioned travelling to Palestine years ago on an inter-faith trip with Muslims and being struck by the passion of their belief. It was exactly this aspect that worried me about Isak’s conversion. I felt that it was Norway rather than the Abu Nour side of Syria that had found the proper role in life for faith. While the passion and fervour of deep faith attracted Isak, it unnerved me.

I asked what his parents thought about his conversion and he said they didn’t know yet. But his mother had returned to Norway from Syria with “sparkles” in her eyes. “It’s not like the politicians and press want us to believe,” she had told people back home.

“What isn’t? Syria or Islam?” I asked.

“Both,” Isak replied.

There was something touching about the openness of his thinking, his willingness to take on belief. More than he knew, the open society he had lived in had shaped his thinking and made the conversion possible. Yet had it been too open? Too diffident? So much so that he now wanted to embrace its opposite?

I asked him if he was worried that his faith would diminish once he was out of an Islamic environment. It was hard to imagine the ritual ablutions among the pubs and wooden Lutheran churches of Fredvang, his fishing village in Norway. “Well, I’ll pray five times a day,” he answered. “And I’ll have the Koran.”

I knew he meant it, yet I felt that Islam was so public a religion, so exacting in its control of the physical details of everyday life, that in distant, cold Norway, with no sound of the muezzin for miles, it would be harder to find the direction to Mecca. I saw Isak as a friend by now, and feared it would all lead to an ugly outcome: hysteria, breakdown, a loss of faith.

The next (and last) time I saw Isak, it was for lunch at my flat. The cartoon furore was brewing up and a Norwegian paper had just printed the images. Isak was critical of the paper’s decision. He said the publication was a small religious rag with a tiny circulation, one they scoffed at in Norway, and that its decision had less to do with free speech than with circulation.

Isak stayed with me most of the afternoon and we spoke again about his conversion. He said the most significant obstacle was a question on the nature of Christ. The Muslims treat him as a great prophet, and give him the title of Ruhollah, or spirit of God, but do not accept that he was the son of God and died for our sins. I said that purely for aesthetic reasons it would be sad to lose that story. Isak replied, “No Muslim could accept that Christ was the son of God because to them God is a flawless entity. He doesn’t come upon the earth and experience, hunger, poverty and death.” It was a conversation for which I had little training. My concern was that the faith—not the precepts but the feeling of faith, and its limitless quality in Islamic society—was overrunning Isak’s careful theological training. He admitted, “Lately, from friends and people I’ve been talking to, I’ve had more influence from the Islamic side. I feel like a split personality.”

The next day, the cartoons were the subject of the Friday sermon from the pulpit of almost every mosque in Syria. Even and I returned to the translation room at Abu Nour. From below, Kuftaro was speaking: “The Europeans are using all their power to destroy our faith. It is our Islamic duty to boycott all goods from these countries.” He compared Islam’s situation today to its situation in 7th-century Arabia, where it was also beset and surrounded by enemies. Not once did Kuftaro make any distinction between the papers that had published the cartoons and the countries themselves. “When our sanctity is oppressed,” Kuftaro continued, “we will sacrifice our souls, spirits and bodies for you, O Prophet.”

Even and I looked nervously at each other. It was chilling to think of identical sermons taking place throughout the country, attended by so many people. Demonstrations were now taking place every day outside various European embassies in Damascus.

After the sermon, brother Rafik, an African-American from Florida who had once told me to listen to the ringing in my heart that is Islam, defended the sermon. “Well they got their response, didn’t they?” he said. “If it’s response they wanted, they have it. There are men sitting on their embassies with AK-47s.” I questioned weakly whether threats and violence were a fitting response to what was indeed a provocation, but one within parameters western liberals considered legitimate.

“Yes, but who gave you that right, if not God himself?” brother Rafik replied. It was hopeless; he had yielded entirely to scripture.

Even and I went back to his house and he prepared lunch for a few friends. We had barely finished eating when we heard the next stage of “the response.”

“There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his Prophet,” rang out from the pavement below. We opened the window and saw that a small but fierce crowd of about 100 people, consisting of women in headscarves, children, old and middle-aged men and youths, was marching under the green banner of Islam in the direction of the French embassy. Some women from the crowd who caught sight of us on the balcony gestured to the girls to cover their heads. Even and I raced downstairs to see the demonstration.

If we hadn’t known what the context was, it would have been hard to make out the cause of the demonstrators. Their chanting, though strong and angry, was simple and repetitive: “Muhammad is the Prophet of God” again and again. The women who chanted had tears running down their cheeks and the message was so simple that a small child on someone’s shoulders led them in their divine slogans. His shrill voice raised their temperature and some at the front of the crowd began to scuffle with the police standing in front of the embassy. They pushed harder against the line of police, but they didn’t have enough momentum or mass to break it. One demonstrator threw some garbage at its steep concrete walls.

It was pathetic to see this crowd with its one slogan yelling angrily at an edifice that did not answer back. It was all they had understood of the situation, all they had been told: the enemies of Islam had directed an offence against them and it was their Islamic duty to respond. They knew nothing of the modern systems from which the provocation had emerged nor how to distinguish between the institutions that were accountable and those that were not.

Suddenly a Syrian friend of Even’s appeared from the crowd. The man had been part of the demonstration, which had gone from the Danish embassy to the French. He was in a state of exhilaration, laughing and joking at Even being a Norwegian. We followed him deeper into the crowd, but they were pushing against the police line again and I stopped. Even and his friend went closer to the front.

Then with no warning, the friend turned around and addressed the crowd. “This is my friend. He is a Norwegian and a good man.” A menacing silence came over the crowd. I feared for Even’s safety. The friend picked Even up on his shoulders and said: “Speak for your country.” Even, if he was scared, showed no sign of it. He took in the crowd for an instant and then addressed them in Arabic. “This is just an embassy,” he said, in a loud clear voice. “It is not actually the country. This incident is the result of lack of understanding. We need to understand each other better. Then we will have the chance to live in togetherness and we can show proper respect to you. Inshallah, Inshallah, Inshallah.” The crowd roared in approval and someone shouted, “He accepts Islam.”

Addressing an angry crowd in a language that was not his own was an achievement for Even in itself, but the message that had come so simply to him was far

beyond anything the crowd had come up with. His message was full of diffidence and sympathy, keen not to blame but to comprehend. In the west such words would be clichéd; in the Arab world Even’s statement resounded with freshness.

We went back to Even’s house afterwards with his Syrian friend. “I wish I could have said more,” said Even, the adrenaline still strong in his voice. “I didn’t have the words. What I really wanted to say was, ‘We know you’re angry, but we still don’t know why.’”

We knew still less the next day, because the feeling of faith had broken its banks and submerged its own precepts. Even walked with the crowd that set fire to his own embassy. Pretending to be a Swede, manhandled and accused, at one stage he feared the crowd would turn on him. Teargassed by the police, he sought refuge with the wounded in a mosque. But when he returned to my flat, the detail that had impressed itself on him was that the crowd had prayed in the street before attacking the embassy, crying, “Our soul, our blood, kind and gentle is our Prophet.”

Some of the Norwegians of Damascus were to have a dinner that night, but it was cancelled as the rioting continued into the evening. As the news made its way across the world, Norway announced it was evacuating its citizens. By 4am, the first planes had started to leave. It was sad. I knew many of them. They were the best of the international lot: the majority had come with an idea of public service and they were the most keen to be part of Syrian life. Even decided to stay. He felt he had many Syrian friends who would protect him should things get ugly. Isak also wanted to stay, but his parents disagreed. The next morning he called me to say that he was leaving within the hour because of fears for his security. “I’m sure things will be fine in Damascus,” he said apologetically, “but now there’s this small, 1 per cent doubt in my mind

As a person of faith, the questions I ask most revolve around testing and challenging my faith. I find it necessary if I want to continually strive towards a life of authenticity, awareness, wisdom, confidence, conviction and clarity. For this I find my inspiration in the examples of C. S. Lewis, Ravi Zacharias, Francis Schaeffer, Os Guinness, Dick and Mardi Keyes, Andrew Fellows, Michael Ramsden, Paul Little, Martin Luther, various thinkers/speakers/writers who've passed through L'Abri, and many others. My favourite question-asker, though, was Jesus. He confronted the 'trusted' religious leaders often, challenging the attitudes and customs they erroneously elevated to the level of the Torah saying, "Haven't you read the Scriptures? Don't you know... ?" Yes, we should read the Scriptures, and yes, we should know... !!

Challenging my own faith involves challenging the teaching I've been fed throughout my life, teaching that has been preached explicitly from the pulpit—that is, stuff most Christians admit to believing, like a creed or 'statement of faith'—as well as that which is not preached but is modelled through words and actions (the latent teaching we Christians don't consciously know we believe), and in this way is unintentionally passed from one generation to the next.

Sadly, this testing of the faith also involves resistance from some who may not share my passion for testing the very foundations of our faith, or challenging established assumptions within religious thought. The Roman Catholic Church of the Renaissance, for instance, was a religious authority that for centuries had assumed its implicit theological 'correctness'. When Luther came along with his ninety-five theses, he was attacked for upsetting the Church's monopoly on 'Truth', for bucking valued traditions, and for dissolving its authority over the masses. The issue was simple: Luther saw that the Church taught unbiblical ideas, and decided that the final word on matters of faith belonged to the Bible, not to religious authorities.

Christians today can't afford to be any less vigilant; we're still called to love God with all our minds. Everything we believe and are taught must be tested just as vigorously against the Word of God—even, if not especially, our most deeply-held assumptions, our most valued customs, and the claims of our most trusted spiritual giants and theologians. Luther risked his life so that average believers like us could hold and read Scripture in our own hands. We can't waste this gift. We also can't waste the gift of our minds and our capacity for observation, logic and reason. So whether we're denounced for reinventing the wheel, jumping on a bandwagon, disturbing the status quo, or denying Scripture when in fact getting to the heart of Scripture our goal, our ultimate authority must still rest in the Bible, and we must never stop asking questions.

Clinical educators in speech–language pathology seek to provide the best possible opportunities for student clinicians to learn about clinical work and how the interaction between clinician and client is constructed. Observing and engaging in practice as apprentices under supervision are traditional means for students to develop knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are appropriate in professional work. In this article, we propose that learning about and applying clinical discourse analysis is an additional means to stimulate and deepen awareness of how clinicians interact with clients. The contexts of student-clinician education in Ireland are presented with regard to how discourse analysis is incorporated into the curriculum. Examples are presented and discussed for using discourse extracts to teach and demonstrate the negotiation of therapy roles. Recommendations for changing how clinicians talk are outlined. In conclusion, the benefits of analyzing clinical discourse to explicate therapy dynamics are described.

Abstract:
Clinical educators in speech-language pathology seek to provide the best possible opportunities for student clinicians to learn about clinical work and how the interaction between clinician and client is constructed. Observing and engaging in practice as apprentices under supervision are traditional means for students to develop knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are appropriate in professional work. In this article, we propose that learning about and applying clinical discourse analysis is an additional means to stimulate and deepen awareness of how clinicians interact with clients. The contexts of student-clinician education in Ireland are presented with regard to how discourse analysis is incorporated into the curriculum. Examples are presented and discussed for using discourse extracts to teach and demonstrate the negotiation of therapy roles. Recommendations for changing how clinicians talk are outlined. In conclusion, the benefits of analyzing clinical discourse to explicate therapy dynamics are described.

"the semiotic operation of juxtaposition, whereby one entity or event points to another. The basic insight, first developed by semiotician Charles Peirce, is that some signs, which he called indices, function via repeated and non-accidental cooccurrence: smoke is an index of fire, clouds of rain."

(Bucholtz & Hall 2004: 378)

I predict that, after the Beijing Olympics, javelin throwing will index female beauty. That of Leryn Franco of Paraguay to more precise. She has a calendar out.

I rest my case.

• Bucholtz, Mary and Hall, Kira (2004). Language and Identity. In Alessandro Duranti (ed.), A Companian to Linguistic Anthropology 369-394. Oxford: Blackwell.

This study extends Goffman's idea that frames are laminated in various ways in interaction by demonstrating how work and play frames are interrelated in two distinct ways in naturally occurring family conversations. An analysis of excerpts from everyday interactions between parents and young children in three families illustrates how frames of play and parenting are laminated (i) by using language to sequentially transform interaction from a literal frame to a play frame (reframing), and (ii) by creating two definitions of the social situation simultaneously through language and sometimes through physical actions as well (blending frames). It identifies linguistic and paralinguistic features by which these laminations are accomplished and shows how the parents in each family use the two different types. Finally, the analysis demonstrates in what ways play constitutes “work” for parents, contributing to our understanding of play as both ambiguous and “paradoxical.”

• John E. Richardson (2007) Analysing Newspapers. An approach from Critical Discourse Analysis. Palgrave.
  

Written by former ace blogger John E. Richardson, Analysing Newspapers provides a very lucid account of Critical Discourse Analysis in the tradition of Norman Fairclough. A sample chapter is available (.doc) on John's website, as is a review by Mary Hogarth.

• Chris Paterson & David Domingo (eds.) (2008) Making Online News. The Ethnography of New Media Production. Peter Lang.
  

A very timely addition to the long-standing research tradition of news production sociology. The book comes with a blog and opens with a useful appraisal of newsroom ethnography.

• Martin Montgomery (2007) The Discourse of Broadcast News: A linguistic approach. Routledge.

Based on discourse analysis of television and radio news interviews, this book illustrates how presentational formats are changing. The discourse of broadcast news has been shortlisted by BAAL for their 2008 book prize.

• Mary Talbot (2007) Media Discourse. Representation and Interaction. Edinburgh University Press.
  

This book is divided into two parts. Part 1 can be read as a broad introduction to the critical analysis of media language. Part 2 focuses on social interaction among and with production and audience communities.

• David Machin & Sarah Niblock (2006) News Production: Theory and Practice. Routledge.

Drawing on ethnographic case studies of journalists at work, this book provides a sociological analysis of journalistic theory and practice. A review can be found here.