Friday, July 10, 2009

Horrors inflicted in the name of Islam

By Irfan Hussain

ALL too often, natural disasters and human atrocities make only a fleeting impression. We watch fascinated and horrified as TV anchors give us their impressions while images of death and disaster roll across our screens.

But soon, one particular crisis is overtaken by another, and relentlessly, the news cycle moves on.

It is not until one sees and hears the survivors that the magnitude of a disaster really sinks in. This is what I experienced while watching Channel 4’s programme on its Dispatches series. Called Terror in Mumbai, the documentary retraces the steps of the terrorists as they first landed in Mumbai by boat, and then made their way across the city, spreading mayhem over a period of 60 hours.

We were shown clips from CCTV cameras that had captured the killing spree. Casually the killers shot everybody who moved. At the VT railway station, where 52 people died, they massacred a family, and a young boy who survived later recounted who had died: "My father. My mother. My aunt. My uncle. Their two sons. What had we done to them? So many dead. What had they done to the terrorists?" What indeed?

When I wrote a couple of columns expressing sympathy for the victims and condemning the killers and those behind them in Pakistan, I got a flood of angry emails demanding to know the proof that linked the terrorists to Pakistan. Our government was in similar denial. And although it has grudgingly accepted that the controllers and planners of the attack were based in Pakistan, and has even arrested some members of the Laskhar-e-Tayyaba that has morphed into the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, very little progress has been made on punishing those responsible.

The most chilling part of the documentary was the constant voice contact between the terrorists and their handlers. Talking on cellphones, the controllers urged on their pawns in Punjabi and Urdu, interspersed with the odd English words and phrases. They certainly did not sound like graduates of a madrasas. Rather, they were professionals doing a job, instructing the young terrorists to kill as many people as possible; urging them to move from one target to another; and repeating that they must not allow themselves to be captured.

Soon after his arrest, Ajmal Kasab was questioned by the police, and admitted that he had been sent by the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. Asked why and how he had joined the group, he said his father had "sold" him to the Lashkar for money that would lift the family out of poverty, and pay for his sisters’ weddings.

A Turkish couple, spared because of their faith, recount how the bodies of massacred guests at the Trident Oberoi piled and how slippery it was to walk over the pools of blood. A neighbour of the rabbi and his wife who were murdered at the Jewish Centre describe how the couple said "shoot me" to the killers and were duly shot. After the terrorists had left, the two-year-old son of the couple is filmed in a heart-breaking sequence, walking around in the room, clearly confused.

After Kasab had been captured, the controllers realised what would happen if he spilled the beans. They ask two of the killers to take a hostage and get her to call the authorities with a demand to free Kasab in exchange for her life. After an hour or so, when there is no response from the government, they are told to finish off the hostage. All through the atrocity, the handlers keep urging their footsoldiers on, encouraging them by descriptions of what they are seeing on TV. "The whole world is watching your deeds… Remember this is a fight between the believers and the non-believers… If you speak to the authorities, tell them this is only the trailer and the real film is yet to come..."

And when the terrorists are clearly exhausted, the controllers urge: "Throw some grenades, my brother... How hard can it be to throw a grenade? For your mission to end successfully, you must be killed. God is waiting for you in heaven". After each such exhortation, the young terrorist at the receiving end says, "Inshallah". At the start of the programme, the handler asks the landing party if they have eliminated the captain of the hijacked boat, and if so, how? "Zibah kar diya", is the chilling response. ("We have slit his throat.")

Repeated use of Islamic phrases underlines the extent to which the faith has been cynically used to spread violence. While Muslims argue that Islam does not condone this kind of terrorism against unarmed, innocent civilians, most do not condemn it in clear, unequivocal terms. After agreeing that such acts are un-Islamic, there is all too often a lingering "Yes, but…" hanging in the air.

It is this ambiguity that has given terror groups in Pakistan and elsewhere the space and legitimacy to operate. Now that Pakistanis have seen the true face of terrorism in Swat, and have begun to support the government in its drive to rid us of this cancer, the lesson needs to be reinforced. One way would be to dub the Channel 4 documentary and show it extensively on various TV channels in Pakistan. We need to hear ordinary people who survived or lost close relatives, and see their pain.

We need to see the horrors inflicted in the name of Islam. Above all, we need to share the agony of our neighbours.

-

Republished from The Asian Age

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

The Hall of Shame: God, Evolution, and Quantum Mechanics

For those who claim that no religious scientists allow their scientific statements and beliefs to be infected with religion, here’s a counterexample. It’s from Francis Collins’s BioLogos website (funded by our friends at The John Templeton Foundation) and is a statement about how God may influence the world through quantum mechanics:

The mechanical worldview of the scientific revolution is now a relic. Modern physics has replaced it with a very different picture of the world. With quantum mechanical uncertainty and the chaotic unpredictability of complex systems, the world is now understood to have a certain freedom in its future development. Of course, the question remains whether this openness is a result of nature’s true intrinsic chanciness or the inevitable limit to humans’ understanding. Either way, one thing is clear: a complete and detailed explanation or prediction for nature’s behavior cannot be provided. This was already a problem for Newtonian mechanics; however, it was assumed that in principle, science might eventually provide a complete explanation of any natural event. Now, though, we see that the laws of nature are such that scientific prediction and explanation are ultimately limited.

It is thus perfectly possible that God might influence the creation in subtle ways that are unrecognizable to scientific observation. In this way, modern science opens the door to divine action without the need for law breaking miracles. Given the impossibility of absolute prediction or explanation, the laws of nature no longer preclude God’s action in the world. Our perception of the world opens once again to the possibility of divine interaction.


This view is nearly identical to that of Kenneth Miller in his book Finding Darwin’s God. What this all means, of course, is that what appear to us to be random and unpredictable events on the subatomic level (for example, the decay of atoms) can really reflect God’s manipulation of those particles, and that this is the way that a theistic God can intervene in the world. And of course these interventions are said to be “subtle” and “unrecognizable.” (Theologians are always making a virtue of necessity. They never explain why, if God wanted to answer a prayer, he would do it by tweaking electrons rather than, say, just directly killing cancer cells with his omnipotence. Theology might, in fact, be defined as the art of making religious virtues out of scientific necessities.) And why did these interventions used to involve more blatant manipulations of nature (several thousand years ago, virgin human females gave birth to offspring, were taken bodily to heaven, and their offspring brought back to life after dying), while in more recent years the manipulations have been confined to the subatomic level?

And think about how ludicrous this theology really is. God: “Well, let’s see. Johnny’s parents have prayed for a cure for his leukemia. They’re good people, so I’ll do it. Now how to do the trick?. If I can just change the position of this electron here, and that one over there, I can cause a mutation in gene X that will beef up his immune system and allow the chemotherapy to work.” Why can’t God just say “Cancer, begone!”? (He apparently did that in Baltimore.) I already how the theists will respond: “That’s not the way God works, because we know how he works and it’s not that way!”

The BioLogos statement appears as part of the answer to the question, “What role could God have in evolution?” I submit that the statement is a scientific one that is deeply infected with religious views. The statement is this: “God acts by tweaking electrons and other subatomic particles, constantly causing non-deterministic changes in the universe according to his desires.” Further, the clear implication is this: “God intervened in the evolutionary process, tweaking some electrons to eventually ‘evolve’ a creature made in his image”. That is a religious statement masquerading as science. And that appears to be the view of some religious theists, especially those Catholics who adhere to the Church’s position that God intervened in human evolution.

Well, what happens if we find out some day that the subatomic “nondeterministic” changes really turn out to be deterministic? After all, quantum mechanics and its indeterminacy are provisional scientific theories; we might eventually find out that what appear to be totally unpredictable events really do have a deterministic causation. Where does Collins’s deity go then? Do you suppose for a minute that Collins and his fellow theistic evolutionists would say, “Right. Everything is in principle predictable after all. Obviously, there’s no room for God to intervene in nature, so theism is wrong.” I wouldn’t count on it.

Making quantum mechanics the bailiwick for celestial intervention is a God-of-the-gaps argument, no different in kind from many arguments for intelligent design. Do theistic evolutionists really want to make quantum mechanics God’s playground? Remember the words of the martyred theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer about the dangers of mixing science and faith:

If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed farther and farther back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat.


--

Republished from Why Evolution Is True

Monday, July 6, 2009

Forced Marriage: 'I can't forgive or forget what they did to me'

Dr Humayra Abedin talks for the first time to Nina Lakhani about the international storm that began when she visited her parents in Bangladesh

An NHS doctor from east London who was held hostage and forced into marriage has spoken for the first time about her four-month ordeal, during which she feared for her life.

Dr Humayra Abedin, who was freed from her vows on the orders of a Bangladeshi court soon after The Independent on Sunday highlighted her plight, described the humiliation and pain she suffered at the hands of her parents, some members of her extended family and nurses and doctors in a private psychiatric hospital in Bangladesh last year.

In an exclusive interview with the IoS, Dr Abedin told of the moment she was abducted: "My face was covered with a piece of cloth by men who told me they were policemen, before they carried me out into an ambulance which was parked outside the house. They held my arms and legs, carried me like a prisoner, while my parents stood in the background."

She was driven, kicking and screaming, to a private hospital, on the request of her family. During the journey, she was held down and gagged by three people as they tried to stop her shouting.

"This was the first time I thought, 'this is it, I am dying'," said Dr Abedin. "I begged them to stop." And so began the nightmare.

For the next three months, every morning and every night, she was forced to swallow dangerously high doses of powerful tranquillisers used to treat people with psychoses. She was kept locked in the hospital, constantly told she was a disgrace by staff and relatives, and denied contact with the outside world. But she could make it stop, so her parents and psychiatrist told her, if she agreed to give up her life in England, marry the man her family had chosen for her and stay in Bangladesh. She refused.

Last December, Dr Abedin was dramatically freed after frantic efforts – highlighted by the IoS – by lawyers in the UK and Dhaka, together with Ask, a human rights NGO, led to her release. The majority of victims are not so lucky; hundreds of missing schoolchildren each year are feared to have been married off abroad by their families.

When you picture a victim of forced marriage, whom do you see? Probably an uneducated, young Asian girl, from a deeply traditional and authoritarian family. But research published last week suggests there could be 8,000 forced marriage cases in England each year, affecting African, European and Middle Eastern communities as well. Victims in 14 per cent of cases are male; 14 per cent are under 16. A worrying proportion involves people with learning disabilities who may not have the capacity to consent.

Sitting in her friend's house in suburban Essex, Dr Abedin looks a million dollars. Her physical appearance has been transformed over the past six months. Gone are the puffy, blotchy skin, brittle hair, stiff joints and tremor she developed as a result of the medication. She complains that she can't lose the last few pounds – anti-psychotics also cause an insatiable appetite – but the physical transformation is truly remarkable. As for her mental state, she denies nightmares or flashbacks, often experienced by victims of abuse and trauma; her anxiety symptoms have gone, but she does admit to dwelling on what happened in the hospital.

"It's my time at the clinic that I think about. These people are meant to be health professionals, but what they did to me was a complete abuse. This I will never forgive or forget," says Dr Abedin, and just for a second she doesn't seem as relaxed or confident as she claims to be.

Born and raised in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, Humayra Abedin, 33, is not your typical victim. An only child from a well-off, middle-class Muslim family, she grew up happily surrounded by friends, cousins and extremely supportive parents who encouraged her to study medicine.

After she graduated, her mother, Sophia, 68, a housewife, and her father, Joynal, 77, a retired businessman who at that time owned a clothing factory and several shops, supported her move to England in 2002 to study for a master's degree in public health at Leeds University. She joined several of her Bangladeshi friends in London the following year and embarked on the exams that would enable her to work in the NHS.

"I was totally focused on my career and very happy. I was also learning how to do very ordinary things for the first time, like washing clothes and shopping, which gave me a great sense of satisfaction to be independent instead of having people helping me with everything like at home. I guess I was changing, just becoming more individual and independent."

She spoke to her parents often and there was occasional talk about marriage but she made it clear that studying was her priority.

"Actually, some of my aunties had wanted me to get married before I came to UK, so that I didn't come alone. This would have been quite normal; in fact, most of my friends who went abroad did so after they got married. But I didn't want that and my dad totally agreed every time it came up. I just used the same excuse and kept putting them off."

At the end of 2007, a cousin, also a doctor, came to visit and started commenting on this new-found independence. After his return to Bangladesh, the tension started to mount.

"The family pressure was building. There were more phone calls, more talk about guys they wanted me to meet, but I told them this wasn't what I wanted. It wasn't about religion; it was a cultural thing. In their eyes I was becoming too Westernised, too focused on my career and getting too old to be alone. It was about protecting me."

In July 2008, she flew home to visit her mother, who her dad claimed was suffering from heart problems. "Both my parents have chronic health problems so it was possible that she was sick. I did think they might want me to meet some guys but not in my wildest dreams could I have imagined what would happen next."

As soon as she arrived she was physically restrained, beaten and locked away. She was forced to take sleeping tablets and constantly bombarded with insults. Her parents never touched her; it was a trusted maid, who had worked for the family for 25 years, who took the lead in the abuse. But she still refused to consent to marriage; a week later, the ambulance arrived and took her away.

"After three months of medication, verbal abuse, emotional blackmail, my mind was weakened. I felt like a puppet. I had lost all hope and had no more energy to fight back," she says.

But before she was carted off to this so-called hospital, she had sent texts to friends in the UK. So unbeknown to her, efforts to secure her release were under way.

A female cousin co-operated with Ask and filed a petition to the court, which served her family with an order demanding she be brought in front of the court in Bangladesh, where forced marriage is illegal.

In order to avoid the authorities, her parents discharged her from the hospital and the next couple of weeks were spent in a medication-induced haze, travelling between towns, staying with family friends, until eventually she was forcibly married to a doctor her parents had deemed a suitable match. She won't talk about what happened with him, only that she's waiting for the marriage to be annulled.

Eventually, left with no option, her parents brought her to the court, convinced she would choose her family over her independence. Her father broke down in court after he was told she had chosen to come back to the UK. It was the last time she saw him.

She arrived back in London to face a media storm. "I felt joy, happiness, relief; you've no idea how thankful I was to the media, my lawyers, everyone who had been trying to get me out of that hospital."

There has been no contact with her parents since she was freed; she has moved and changed her phone numbers to avoid them. It is not something she will rule out for ever; she still loves them, but is nowhere near the point of being able to forgive them. She believes her aunts and uncles convinced her parents that she was out of control and needed protection. "I think my dad was made to feel guilty about encouraging me, his only child, to come to the UK, so he felt he had to sort things out. What they did was wrong, but I still think from their point of view they were trying to protect me. But that psychiatric hospital ... the staff told me they knew I was normal, so what they did to me was grossly unethically and criminal." Two other women in similar situations have since been rescued from the same clinic.

A strong, ambitious woman, she is determined not to let this horrific experience become a life-defining one. It is her friends, colleagues and employers she turns to for support; they have become her family and she cannot praise them enough. Work comes first, but she hasn't forgotten how to have fun: listening to Bollywood music while eating home-cooked food with friends is her ideal way to relax. She will finish her GP training with the London Deanery next year and still wants the happy-ever-after ending she always dreamed about.

"The whole incident has made me realise how precious and beautiful life is and it's made me stronger, so maybe it was my destiny. Right now my focus is my career. I love my job, and I also want to do what I can to raise awareness about forced marriage – the protection order was the turning point in my life. In the future, I definitely want to get married to the right person, have children, all those things that I always wanted."


Republished from The Independent