http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Thu, 21 Dec 2006 05:08:36 EST http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/12/21/050836.php Andrew MorrisClose your eyes for a moment and conjure up the most traditional Christmas scene you can imagine. Perhaps you see tall huddled houses, each with its rich icing of snow. Flickering lamps in windows providing a hearty glow. A picturesque old town square, with rosy-cheeked children bundled into winter clothes, hurling snowballs. Bespectacled old men and women tottering by, benevolent smiles on their lips. Skaters whizzing past and falling with gales of laughter to the ground. A perfectly-formed snowman, complete with carrot nose and eyes of coal. And above all, a sky of indigo with polished stars. If these scenes correspond to your actual experience, count yourself lucky. I grew up, like all the children around me in Wales, with these scenes imprinted on my mind, but it never really occurred to me as a young boy to ask why I never saw anything like this in my own town. Sure, we got snow on rare occasions, but usually the salty sea air saw to that, before we could build up much of an armoury of snowballs. The round missiles I pelted towards my brother's head would more often than not break up in mid-flight and flutter harmlessly to the ground. Meanwhile, our feeble attempts at snowmen often melted in a single weak-sunned afternoon. No, the place portrayed in the Christmas cards was another country.It was only when I arrived in Prague as a teacher many years later that I suddenly realised what had happened. Our entire range of images, in fact the entire iconography of Christmas had been lifted wholesale from central Europe while no one was looking. Here at last were those very scenes I had gazed at throughout my childhood. To wander around this exquisite old city in December was to step into a magic Christmas card, to be transported to the neverland promised in all those colourful tableaux.Christmas starts early in the Czech Republic. On St Barbara's Day (December 4th), a cherry tree is taken inside the kitchen and put into water. The branch then bursts into bloom during the Christmas season. This is considered good luck. If the girl tending it is of age and not married and the branch blooms exactly on Christmas Eve, she will find a good man and marry him within a year. I'm not sure if my girlfriend at the time (who is now, I am happy to say, my wife) found a cherry tree. If she did, it must have been a slow-bloomer: she got me anyway, lucky girl, but not till many years later. The big day for children in that part of the world is the feast day of Sv. Mikulas (St. Nicholas/Santa Claus) on December 6th. On that day, Sv. Mikulas walks around in his long red robe, accompanied by an angel holding a large book and a quill pen, followed close behind by a devil rattling large chains. Sv. Mikulas asks the children if they have been good during the whole year. The angel writes down their answers in the book. A good child has to sing a song or recite something for Sv. Mikulas. A naughty child is told they could be put into the devil's sack and taken to hell. (Ah, the ruses we dream up to keep unruly kids under control.) If you've been good you can expect candy, nuts, fruit and small gifts in your shoes. If, on the other hand, you've been a pain, expect potatoes, rocks, or lumps of coal. The tradition is that most children get at least one rock, as no child is perfect. Obviously they never met me.So the moral is: if you're good, you have to walk round with fruit, nuts and candy in your shoes, whereas if you're bad you get a potato or a rock to throw at someone? I know which option I'd have chosen as a boy. In the run-up to Christmas Day in Prague, the city comes alive. Winter markets where you can sip mulled wine by candlelight, stamping your feet to fight off the cold, and eat sandwiches slathered with lard and raw onions. (I can tell you're tempted.) You open your presents on Christmas Eve, and then head for an atmospheric Midnight Mass. At lunchtime on Christmas Day, the traditional meal is carp and potato salad. Back then we bought ours from a market, but in most families the carp is kept fresh in the bath in the days up to the meal, which must make taking a bath a slippery experience. I don't think the potato salad is kept there too, but I may be wrong. All the while the snow falls softly to the ground on all the cobbled streets around, banking up against the church doors, muffling the footsteps of the passers-by hurrying through the silent, dreamy city.Quite a contrast from the Christmases I looked forward to so much as a boy. The excitement always began when we were allowed to write letters to Santa Claus asking for presents. I found one of mine the other day, asking in six-year-old handwriting marginally more legible than mine is today, for a sundry assortment of toys, but ending with the coda: "PS. Lots of sweets". Depressing to see that in almost forty years I've changed so little in my culinary tastes. We would receive an Advent Calendar on December 1st with one little chocolate hidden behind each of the 31 miniature doors. The idea was to open one door per day and reward yourself with the treat tucked away inside. I think my record was to reach December 6th. I can't remember quite when I stopped believing in Santa Claus (was I 33, 34?) but back then the arrival of this jolly figure at parties, complete with his sack of presents, was always a joy. If we were really lucky, there might even be a trip to London to one of the famous toyshops such as Hamleys, where you could go into Santa's Grotto and tell him about all the presents you wanted, sitting on his knee. Yes, I know what you're thinking, but in those days it was allowed.Around the same time, the TV programmes would take on a more festive feel. You could hear the sound of carols in the shops and the warm tones of the Salvation Army brass band in the market place. Being Welsh, we were also inspired to be musical ourselves. I remember one particularly fine year when, having newly discovered the clarinet, I teamed up with two other boys on trumpets and we went round the neighbourhood playing carols. We thought we were quite excellent, and yet our diabolical parping probably drove at least one resident insane. I blame the winter air, which rendered our instruments out of tune. These days we'd probably be sued on account of the emotional distress caused by our merrymaking. Christmas cards would be pouring in by now. There was the family ritual of sending cards to all our relatives, sitting around writing out envelopes from my mother's well-thumbed old address book, and of course the tradition of decorating the stairs with tinsel and setting up the Christmas tree with fragile coloured baubles. As the big day approached, we'd leave out a mince pie and a nip of whisky for Santa, and then begin the impossible task of getting to sleep. The slightest creak on the stairs of my parents heading for bed, towards midnight, would be met by the bundle of energy that was your correspondent aged eight shouting, "Is he here yet?" May I take now this public opportunity to apologise to my dear parents for terrorising them in this way? And then of course, Christmas Day itself. Tearing open the wrapping on weird and wonderful presents. Particular favourite memories for me all these years later remain a spectacularly useless game in which robots boxed each other's heads off and a ruler shaped like a big foot, but all these were eclipsed by my first golden saxophone a few years later, which must have delighted the entire street. There would be visits from neighbours and family all day. One set of neighbours gave me a bar of soap (not the same one) every year for about ten years. Was this a hint? The soap was put in the same drawer as the strangely coloured socks, unwearable ties, and the other soaps. If I'd been Richard Branson, I'd have started a post-Christmas bazaar. But alas, I was destined to be a teacher, not a billionaire, and these goldmines lay gathering dust in my bedside drawer. Amongst those mundane gifts, what gems there were, too: the coloured football annuals, the magical adventure books, and let's not forget the sweets. Then on with the best clothes for the church service. The religious element never really meant much at that age. Perhaps I'd been scarred by the experience of having to play third shepherd as an infant. Standing there in my dressing gown with a makeshift headdress, terrified I'd forget my line. (I had to exclaim 'Lo!' at a key moment, imbuing it with lots of feeling). In the end, the service was, for me, more about trying (and failing) to create harmonies for all those familiar carols. I did hit a few notes previously uncharted by western musicologists, but otherwise it was not a great success.In food terms, the highlight was the traditional late lunch of chicken or turkey with all the trimmings, ravenously wolfed down, except brussels sprouts (which, and I remain convinced, were a culinary form of divine punishment). An evening full of our favourite comedy programmes on TV, and then the tremendous rush would begin to die down, with, back in those days, at least three days before you could race to the shops to spend your money, your record and book tokens. Today, half the shops are open the next day, if not on Christmas Day itself.This leads to my last Yuletide tale, probably the least commercial I've ever experienced. We were working years later in Eritrea, at a school in a remote valley four hours on foot from the nearest town. No jingles, adverts, or cards in sight; although I suppose the camels pulled by nomads did bring to mind the three wise men. Undeterred, we managed to catch the choir of Kings College singing their carols on the radio, and our students helped us create a makeshift tree of acacia branches covered in coloured bits of cardboard box, carefully cut into the seasonal shapes of stars and angels. A sad spectacle, but we were proud of it.In the capital of Asmara, we might have eaten spicy chicken and drank homemade beer, and attended a service at the Italian-built cathedral on the main avenue, but there in our valley we had to create our own festive spirit in the glaring sunshine. For food, we had only goat and popcorn, washed down with strong, freshly brewed coffee and locally made wine. Not the most traditional meal I grant you, but one we relished nevertheless, having eaten only lentils virtually every other day of the year. A surprise package from home arrived at the last minute, containing a whole bag of toffees. We solemnly ate one of these each per day, making them last a good 15 days this time. In one sense at least, I had progressed slightly in the long journey from my childhood into middle age. As evening fell that festival day and the frogs began their twilight chorus round the lake, we wished each other a merry Christmas and vowed never to take the season for granted again. At the same time, there in our darkening valley in the moonlight, far from the baubles and the jingles, we realised how simple an occasion it can be. A time to understand what really matters: taking part in celebration with people you love. It's an experience shared in a multitude of different ways by every culture the world over. Culture57333@blogcritics.org Thu, 21 Dec 2006 05:08:36 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/11/27/054854.php Andrew MorrisIt is one of those magical Dhaka scenes. We are trundling along in a rickshaw down small and crooked lanes. It is night, and light bulbs glow under each rickshaw - miniature moons suspended in the darkness. A warm breeze blows in our faces. All around the sights of nighttime, Dhaka backstreets crowd in on us. The orange sparks from a welder's torch flare up in a mechanic's shop to our left as the workers crouch round a battered piece of old metal. On our right, a group of old bearded men sit discussing life in a homoeopathist's waiting room where the brown jars glow dully under the bright strip lighting. Pale yellow walls draw the visitors in, suggesting homeliness and calm. There is the music of rickshaw bells - the traffic, for once a long way away, hidden in the folds of darkness. We pass fabric shops where there are more assistants than customers and CD shops blaring out the latest techno Bhangra music. Women and men emerge from the shadows and slip by almost unnoticed. Occasionally one of them catches sight of this foreigner and a look of momentary surprise travels briefly across their face before they too are lost to the past.My friend N and I are talking. It's one of those long conversations in which we try to discover each other's culture. We have talked before about our different perspectives on arranged marriages, the rituals of death, the joys and perils of childhood. Tonight though we touch on two more of these topics that delight and contain, for me, the whole point of all this travel and exploration, this journey towards experience.He tells me how he goes home to visit his family in Rajshahi once a month. He is a college lecturer - a man of knowledge, as we like to say here, a man who commands respect. In fact it surprises me how often I myself am introduced or addressed as a learned consultant. This conjures up an image of a mediaeval scholar, candle in hand, poring over a manuscript that threatens to turn to dust in my fingers. Despite this great erudition, when N visits his mother at home, everything changes. There he is no longer a 40-year old pillar of the educational community - he is merely a son, and that brings with it a whole new set of norms and rules. He tells me that if his mother instructs him to come home at 9pm, then he does so. If he arrives home late, he is quite naturally reprimanded. This surprises me - surely at his stage in life, he is no longer expects to be rebuked? Why doesn't he tell his mother not to interfere? Why not have a frank exchange of views, clear the air? Oh no - the answer is simple. So simple it almost pains N to have to spell it out for me. This is impossible, because his mother has spoken. She deserves better than this; she has earned this infallibility through the years of motherhood. As a consequence, it is surely obvious she cannot be contradicted. My mind floods with guilty memories of times when I, like everyone else I know, responded with irritation to my own parents' guidance back in the days when I thought the world was mine to rule. We prize our freedom back home in the old country. No one can tell us what to do -- a lesson we learn in adolescence -- and we repeat it so often. How difficult it would be to return to the submission that is expected here: the automatic deference. We have come too far. After a while the conversation moves on to another intriguing aspect of family life. It never ceases to amaze me here that family members can travel across the country, turn up unannounced at a relative's home, and expect to be accommodated, fed, and watered for up to a month. The thought of turning up for three weeks, suitcase in hand, at an aunt or cousin's house back home simply doesn't compute. We're not talking about crisis situations here. We're talking about saying, "I know; I think I'll call in on Uncle Bob - for a month or so." I can picture all too easily the surprised expression, the awkward moment in the doorway, the pained politeness, and the resigned, "Well I suppose you'll be wanting a cup of tea?" None of that here. As a host in Bangladesh, you put aside all your plans, welcome this visitor from afar, and then happily put them up and put up with them for as long as it takes. When I tell my colleagues here of how, back home, we would need to arrange these things and call ahead, they are astonished. Even for your family? Yes, I'm afraid so - in fact sometimes especially for your family. Visits for tea are one thing, and it goes without saying that longer visits from parents or siblings would be a matter of course, but that's as far as it goes.I am in turn astonished at the generosity of heart shown here. No doubt people feel inconvenienced from time to time on the arrival of Great Uncle Faisal, but that does not alter the situation. Family is family, and it's your duty to do the right thing by your guest. There is nothing more to say.This may change over time of course. Friends and colleagues tell me of their fear, in the age of the mobile phone and surround-sound home entertainment, that the social fabric is being threatened as people carve out their own sense of space and individual life. In the meantime, people count here, and it shows itself in so many ways. At home I always prided myself on an ability to remember people's faces - even long after a chance meeting. I remember the waiter who served me in a restaurant once or the taxi driver who picked me up at a crowded station years ago. Sadly however, this is a talent that goes completely unacknowledged here because, in this place, everyone remembers you. People have a gift for noticing other people and they store your face, seemingly forever, in their remarkable memories. It is a true indicator of how important people are here to each other. Who knows, perhaps this talent for humanity, the respect for family, and openness to receiving relatives is all different facets of the same diamond. This jewel has, in many other countries, already become a museum piece. In a darkened room, crowds of open-mouthed onlookers surround the glass case, gazing in silence at the spotlit gem, trying in vain to remember what it once represented. Culture56308@blogcritics.org Mon, 27 Nov 2006 05:48:54 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/11/19/094638.php Andrew MorrisWhat is education for? Is it to transmit our collective social wisdom from one generation to the next, to pass on the best that's been said and done? Is its main purpose perhaps to promote socialisation: preparing the young to work together as a society, follow its customs, and achieve social harmony? Or is it to equip young people with the skills and knowledge they need for independent adult life and the demands of the labour market? It's a basic but vital question, and yet on my many visits to classrooms up and down the country, I'm not sure it's one we've fully thought through in relation to the way we actually teach and learn here.Classrooms are microcosms of the whole education system, and indeed in many ways of wider society. When all the conventions are implemented, policies drafted, plans made, training given, it's here that the real thing happens. So what goes wrong?Let's push open the door, enter a typical classroom and observe from the side. This morning the geography teacher enters the class (bare walls, gloomy light, a fan turning slowly overhead) and offers a hurried greeting. The students dutifully chorus their response. She spends a significant amount of time taking the register and recording the details of attendance on the board. Once the class gets underway, she writes up a short title and text. Some of the students appear to copy it down. She fires out a question, "How long is the Jamuna Bridge?" One student answers correctly and is ordered to sit down. She then asks the same question of six more children. All offer identical answers and are also told to sit. The next question is asked, "How many rivers are there in Bangladesh?" Towards the middle of the class, a boy who is called on mumbles an incorrect response. He is left standing, his eyes full of resigned shame: he has been here before. Next we turn to the textbook and the class reads aloud one by one from its pages. More questions follow and all are answered by those keen students in the front benches. They look well fed and bright. They lean forward and follow the teacher's instructions with eagerness. In the back row a student stares at the visitors for a while, then gets bored and looks out the window. He doodles idly on a piece of paper and opens his book slowly when asked. His exercise book is a collection of half-finished sentences, gaps, and torn sheets. Towards the end of the lesson, students read out a piece they have written. All their contributions are identical: it turns out they have memorised and copied a section from the textbook. As the lesson drifts to a close, we wander out in silent torpor.As an outsider here, this class (even though it of course doesn't reflect the reality of every classroom in the country) offers up many questions about the basics of teaching and learning and how they reflect the wider purpose of education itself.We could start with the physical environment. I can't help wondering why there is so little decoration and so few displays of student work here on classroom walls. The message seems to be that the physical environment in which we learn is not worth our attention and bears no relation to the motivation and engagement of people who spend years of their lives within these four walls. Is it because students are rarely asked to produce something original and therefore worth displaying? Or that their thoughts and insights count for little anyway? Here is a place, these empty walls suggest, where you come to receive knowledge, not to create it.Furthermore, few teachers seem to devote much attention to the emotional atmosphere of a classroom. There is often little in the way of relationship between teacher and student: in fact they seem to occupy different universes. This might be a reflection of cultural values. Clearly it would be inappropriate to suddenly look for much warmer relationships, but it's difficult to see what purpose such distance serves, such complete disconnect between a teacher and her class, in which the teacher often does not even know the students' names. Perhaps at base lies the idea that education is not meant to be pleasant or engaging. It's a duty, something you put up with until you escape into the fresh air at the end of each day.This emotional disconnect seems further encapsulated for me in the way teachers respond to students' answers. Very seldom are words of praise or encouragement heard beyond the tacit acknowledgement of a correct answer in the command to sit. Is it simply the belief that children do not need such positive reinforcement, or again a sense that feelings, like physical environment, are unimportant? Colleagues say, "This is not our way," implying that children and young adults here have less need of praise. However, all learning, whatever your cultural background, means undertaking a risky journey. Surely confidence is a key factor in this. The relationship of positive feedback to self-esteem is obvious. Such confidence developed in early years can sustain us into adult life. Conversely, diffidence caused by negative responses from teachers can affect us long after we leave school. How can the confidence to try things out (and yes, even make mistakes) be served by leaving those students standing who get the answers wrong? Even as a mature adult, I'd baulk at the risk factor here. If my punishment for an incorrect answer is to be publicly humiliated, isn't it easier to take the safe option and keep silent?The isolation of each student from each other (they rarely have a chance to help each other or discuss an answer) keeps the class atomised and offers little in the way of developing social interaction skills. Meanwhile, as a back bench student, I can relax in the knowledge that the teacher will rarely if ever acknowledge my presence, let alone ask me a question. The way we focus on those students sitting in the front of our classes sends out a strong message that only the successful are important, only the chosen few are worth bothering with. It means the lesson goes at a pace that suits them and those who cannot follow can be disregarded. As teachers though, our concern should not only focus on those whose family backgrounds, connections, and innate aptitude equip them to be natural survivors here. Their futures are guaranteed, but what about the majority of their classmates? It is they who need support most.Turning to the lesson content, I wish I had a thousand taka for every time I heard a 'display question' (one whose answer is already known to the teacher). "How long is the Jamuna Bridge?" is a classic example. The glory of Bangladesh's longest bridge is not in question, but surely we would do better to ask our children questions such as "What difference has the Jamuna Bridge made to people living either side of it?" and "How has it changed Bangladesh?" That would at least encourage our students to reflect and formulate opinions, and in doing so they could develop the crucial independence of thought that will serve them both now and in later life.In our typical classroom, the way the question is asked once and then endlessly repeated points to a fundamental flaw. If we keep asking the same questions, which depend on recall rather than interpretation, we are merely asking our students to go through the motions, to jump through hoops like performing circus animals. Soon they become wise to this as they see it reinforced over thousands of hours of classroom time. It also discourages them from listening to each other. Why bother? We're all saying identical things. The same applies to students reading the same text aloud, another staple of classroom life here (as indeed it was during many turgid lessons in my own adolescence).A colleague tells a story of a teacher who visited a student's house and then set the class the task of describing where they lived. The student duly produced a detailed description of a corrugated iron slum even though the teacher knew full well that the student lived in an apartment. When asked about this, the student saw nothing surprising -- surely the task was simply to produce the requisite number of words, not to actually say anything meaningful?Consider this contrast: recently I received a questionnaire by email from my niece as part of a school project. Fascinated, I attempted to answer the engaging questions she asked: "Are you a good learner? What are you good at and why? Are you good with people? How do you learn best?" Such questions seem designed to foster and promote an enquiring mind and also to focus on the key question of how we learn at all. She will benefit hugely from finding out about how to develop the skill of learning in an era when facts are no longer immutable but constantly changing. My niece, by the way, is seven years old, and clearly thinking for herself in a way we might never dare to suggest here at her age.Perhaps the biggest problem in our education practice here, however, relates to the whole notion of memorisation: a method of learning which encourages conformity, passivity, and acceptance of what we are told rather than individual expression, challenge of received ideas, and analysis of the 'truths' handed down. Memorisation is a precise tool that has value only in certain, very limited contexts, such as learning vocabulary when learning a language. Apart from that, the only real skill it develops it that of remembering long pieces of text, and that's not a skill I've had to call on once in the twenty-five years since leaving school. It's considered an essential technique for passing exams as well of course, although even the most cursory glance at pass rates for the major exams here suggests that if this is the method of choice, it's not really working.Such classroom approaches and conventions can continue for decades. Teachers tend to teach as they were taught, and unless they receive meaningful training (not just exposure to exotic theories), there is neither reason nor incentive to change the status quo. The torch is simply passed on from generation to generation. At least now there are training programmes across the country trying to raise awareness of alternative practices and break this rigid mould, but there's a long journey ahead, and these are just the first steps.In conclusion, let's revisit our opening question. It's possible to say that education at its best can fulfill all three goals: transmit culture, offer guidance as to the kind of social practices and attitudes required in a harmonious state, and equip the next generation with key life skills. Currently, however, our typical class does none of these satisfactorily. Culture is best transmitted through being engaged with and understood, not memorised. The social skills we want our young people to develop are hardly fostered in our strict classroom atmosphere where co-operation is non-existent and competition to reach the front bench and to pass the exam is the dominant goal. As for developing key life skills, such as independent decision-making and the confidence to go on learning, over the years these students are implicitly told their voice counts for nothing, that risk-taking can lead to humiliation, and that the best way to succeed is by keeping your head down and repeating what you have been told. Above all, they receive loud and clear the message that reality is there to be accepted, not questioned. Is this really the kind of student we want to produce?Which sectors of our society, we might ask ourselves, benefit most from a population that is systematically taught to be passive and uncritical and not to challenge the order of things?This piece is based on my professional experience of observing classrooms across Bangladesh, but may also have resonances further afield in the region and in similar countries across the world. My work has been in the public sector schools, both urban and rural, catering to the vast majority of the population, not in the private English-medium schools that serve the elite. Culture55975@blogcritics.org Sun, 19 Nov 2006 09:46:38 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/11/11/100350.php Andrew MorrisI watch with increasing despair the portrayal of Muslims in the mainstream Western media. Armchair commentators, many of whom have never lived in a Muslim culture, fulminate about the Muslim threat, basing their entire conception of the religion on a few cardboard cut-out figures. Osama will do for starters, as a convenient bogeyman. Remote, intense and hirsute, he fits the bill perfectly. Then when he disappears into a cave we can always turn to up a few local caricatures: an imam with a hook for a hand such as Abu Hamza for example, is a gift for myopic observers. (Sure, he’s there, and he’s a nasty piece of work, but how representative is he of anything? Imagine the idea of the Muslim media construing all their images of Christianity based on Belfast firebrand Ian Paisley or Pat Robertson in the States. Or even, while we’re about it, on George Bush). A mosque or two with shadowy connections adds a dash of sinister mystique. If we lump every disparate group of disaffected radicals with a grievance under the meaningless term of Al Qaeda and then talk grandly about the battle for civilisation, we ratchet up the tension nicely. Soon the general public is convinced that this is a battle for our very survival. This of course spills over to affect anyone who looks even vaguely Middle Eastern or Asian, whether Muslim, Sikh or Hindu. Whose purposes does this tension serve,? Of course the reporting of horrendous terrorist events is necessary: it’s the conflation of these in the public mind with the entire Muslim community and the notion of Islam itself which is alarming. The repeated juxtaposition of Islamic with fundamentalist, zealot, extremist or terrorist in the media serves to impress on us the constant threat posed by the entire religion. There is much heat and very little light in the debate. One hapless comment writer on the Guardian website recently referred to the ‘oppressive yolk’ (sic) of Islam. Clearly this is an area in which we are walking on eggshells. But here’s another perspective, from Bangladesh, where for the vast majority of the population, Islam is part of the home, the street, and the village. Where it is a lived religion, not just a media construct. And you know what? Like all religions played out from day to day, it’s pretty uneventful. It’s not an ideology: it exists in the commitment of minuscule acts of human friendship. It gives people a vocabulary to understand their grief, their moments of elation, their losses, and the pressures they are under. It keeps families together (but doesn’t necessarily stop them bickering or smouldering with resentment: it’s a faith, not a magic potion). It works through and around individuals. It offers a seasonal catalogue of festivals to mark the passing of the months. It provides, in short, the whole background to the grind and flow of daily life. Islam here is in the air, but not in your face. Living here, you first notice the impact of Islam on people’s names: the same given names that are used by the Muslim Umma or community throughout the world. And then of course in the language. Arabic or Persian greetings such as Assalamu Aleikum (Peace be with you) for hello, and Khoda Hafez (May God be with you) for goodbye. But there again we have those in English, and most of us probably don’t really mean God be with you when we casually say goodbye, any more than we really want to offer divine blessings to people who sneeze. For any event which involves even a tiny degree of uncertainty, the word Inshallah (if God wills) is essential. Evidence of the attention the Almighty pays to even the smallest details. As in "So, we’ll be leaving in five minutes?" "Inshallah." And the more devout you are, the more gravely you intone this. My driver can make it last a good three seconds. Or if you want to celebrate something amazing, for example the birth of a child, there’s always Maashallah (God has willed it!). Another key phrase is ‘Alhamdalillah’ (By the grace of the Almighty) which will do nicely when asked how you are today. Or indeed to wish you well when you sneeze. Meanwhile, the same Allahu Ekbar (God is great) so often provided courtesy of the rent-a-crowd on TV is just as often heard here as a kind of world-weary sigh. My driver is more inclined to utter it when he stretches with a yawn, or sees a traffic jam ahead, than in moments of revolutionary fervour. My favourite example of religious language here came out as an English phrase. When talking about a life change clearly ordained by Allah, which could not be reversed, a colleague concisely explained to me, "You see, what is allotted cannot be blotted."Of course you can observe the religion at work in people’s appearance, too – in the generally modest dress worn by women, although saris or salwar kameezes are actually more expressions of culture and climate than faith. There are relatively few veils, or even headscarves in the world of education where I work – far more among the urban poor and in the villages. And in the loose robes, beards, and skull caps worn by more devout men: although again these are actually a small minority, most men preferring western dress. Religion is there also in the many customs and holy festivals: nearly all of my colleagues will observe the fast at Ramadan, eating nothing from sunrise to sundown, joining together for a family meal before evening prayers. Or in daily observance: some male colleagues of mine go to pray five times a day, using the mosque or prayer room found in every institution. But the picture is neither uniform nor static: there are also plenty who don’t go to pray. I have a number of friends who are avowedly secular and even anti-clerical. All in all it’s a pretty laid-back place, where you practise at a level of your own choosing, not dictated to by the imposition of orthodox or fundamentalist belief. Colleagues of mine who are Hindu might beg to differ, and there are certainly ancient prejudices lurking beneath the surface, but there is very little communal violence today of the sort which marked the birth pangs of Bangladesh. Meanwhile, those Islamic students or elders who do have a more fundamentalist interpretation are given scant respect by most of the people I know, despite the inroads they have made to political power. And the whole country rejoiced when the most notorious religious extremist, whose nickname was Bangla Bhai (Bangla Brother), was caught recently in a police raid.Nothing extreme then. Nothing to be alarmist about. The media is obsessed with those who preach and proclaim the ‘truth’ of Islam, and concentrates on the outlandish personalities, the orthodoxies, the narrow interpretations, the perceived ‘mediaevalism’ and ‘inflexibility’ of the faith. But all that is a long way from people’s experience here, as they go about their daily lives, looking out for each other, complaining about the government, dodging cars, getting food on the table and kids into school. They care as much for dogma as your average Saturday shopper back home worries about the meaning of the Trinity.In fact the question of whether religions are true seems almost irrelevant in this context. People observe religions not just because they represent ‘revealed truth’ (an abstract concept for most), but because for them religion seems to work, just as it worked for their forefathers. That’s what sustains religious belief and practice the world over. Of course there are powerful forces at work at the top of religious hierarchies, which historically have enforced observance, but that is unsustainable in today’s anti-authoritarian age. (Look at Italy, where otherwise empty pews are dotted with ancient women dressed in black saying their rosary). And while it may be difficult culturally for individuals to opt out completely of religious practice or belief within a traditional community, whole generations can and do drift away. (As in Britain, preferring to worship these days at the altar of B&Q.) By contrast, it continues to thrive where people still willingly buy into it. (Poland, for example, where there is still standing room only at Sunday mass, or Russia, experiencing its own resurgence of religious expression.)A religion ‘works’ for people if it does three simple things: it helps them make sense of their existence in a changing, often bewildering, world; it enhances the quality of their lives; and it makes them better people than they would otherwise have been, (which is different, of course, from being better than others, or even as good as they should be). And of course, in working, religions become believable. It’s not that they work for people because they are true: they are true for people because they work. That is why religion will always be part of the scenery, at least here in Bangladesh. Looking around, all I see are ordinary people drawing on their faith to make a go of their lot, to coexist without strife, and to get by until evening. And though I haven’t put the question to them in so many words, I, for one, am convinced that none of the people I know and love here have the slightest inclination to destroy our civilisation, as so many would have us believe. They have far more important things to be getting on with. Culture55641@blogcritics.org Sat, 11 Nov 2006 10:03:50 EST