Growing old disgracefully

Hajira Amla

If you think your parents embarrassed you when you were a teenager, just wait until they get old and grey. Senility is the ultimate tool used by parents to repay children for the hard work they did “raising” us.

Every time I visit my parents these days, I marvel at the way they make me repeat every sentence I say at least thrice. My mother talks incessantly about her plants and spends about eighty percent of her day running outside to see if her ducks and chickens are ok. Then she calls my father outside to see the rat eating the ducks’ food and he spends twenty minutes myopically staring down the barrel of his air gun, engaged in geriatric pursuit. The rats must be sniggering in between mouthfuls of the ducks’ maize feed.

All of a sudden, the house seems to be full of Glomail and Verimark products. Everything seems to have a stamp on it that says “as seen on TV” – a sure sign of diminished capacity in my book. When I go shopping with them, they spend two hours in the supermarket filling two large trolleys as though they were chipmunks storing up for the winter – but if you think this is monthly grocery shopping, you’d be very wrong. They stockpile cooldrinks, potato crisps and milk as though they were selling them to the general pubic. They spend more money on their various animals than themselves – if they took the amount they spent on vet bills, vetinerary medicines and animal feed every month and donated it to a charitable cause, they could probably support a family of five here in South Africa (or a family of thirty-five in Zimbabwe).

My dad still smokes three packs a day and drinks like a fish but says he mixes his brandy with diet cola because “it’s healthier”. On the plus side, however, they do seem to be fighting much less these days, with only occasional spats of dour rhetoric emanating from the couch in the living room where my father sits.

On the whole, they are enjoying their slow journey to senility together and making others suffer – but I can’t say I’m totally undeserving. After all the nights I have kept my mother awake as a baby, all the nappies she had to change, all the times I got hurt and they wiped away my tears, soon it will be my turn to change their nappies and feed them. Eeew.

I’ve got to love them – after all, no-one else will.

The pigeons are coming to get you…

By Hajira Amla

We all know pigeons can be stubborn, psychotic and sometimes just plain evil when they have inconsiderately decided to use your roof for roosting purposes. Most people who live in densely-populated urban areas will tell that no matter what you do, the pigeons are there to stay.

I discovered this firsthand when I moved more towards the centre of Johannesburg and discovered that pigeons had been residents in my ceiling space for quite some time. Every night, I lie awake listening to the sound of pigeon fights, pigeon babies and lots and lots of pigeon sex.  Several attempts have been made to remove the nests and block up the holes in the eaves where they come in, but in a couple of days the pigeons always win. After communicating their anger and utter contempt of me by trying to pry my windows open with their little red pigeon claws, they peacefully go about their business of prying another hole into the eaves and settle in once more. I have since despaired of ever prevailing against them and have resolved to move out as soon as humanly possible.

One thing I didn’t know, however, is that pigeons are so evil they have a “hive mind”, were resposible for World War One and are bent upon the destruction of the human race. I discovered this purely by accident while typing random things into Google, such as “how to kill pigeons”, “pigeons are evil” and finally, “pigeon conspiracy”.

According to PigeonResistance.com:

“The hive mind retreated and contemplated the situation. From the 1960s to the 1990s it watched as humans urbanised at a startling rate. The cities grew rapidly and the pigeons positioned their burgeoning populations in them. Sometimes they tried their old tactics - notably in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge - but did little on a global scale.

Today, the hive mind is older, wiser and ever more intelligent. It has marshalled its forces in preparation for a final assault. Vast armies of pigeons are positioned in every city across the globe. The pigeons plan a three-fold attack:

1. Disease: the pigeons are bringing into our cities diseases which do not affect them, but are very dangerous for human beings - for example, the SARS virus scare in early 2003.
2. Biological/chemical warfare: using captured human terrorists, and playing on the current geopolitical situation, the pigeons will bring into our cities biological and chemical agents that will cause significant human fatalities.
3. Propaganda: governments and pro-pigeon groups like PAPA are used to protect pigeon interests and try to destablise anti-pigeon movements such as the Pigeon Resistance. “

Errrrr….. yes. Well then. Obviously I must have been hypnotised by the evil onslaught already. There is a book called The Pigeon Conspiracy by South African web developer Andrew Wood, a website called www.pigeonconspiracy.com and various discussion boards investigating the best way to commit pigeonicide. There’s a rumour going around the groups that baking soda makes pigeons explode. Interesting…. and this was discovered how?

After the second batch of pigeon conspiracy e-mails from a mysterious person called Richard Pierson did the rounds, governments were apparently ’lobbied to destroy urban pigeon populations and several massacres saw scores of birds killed by “anti-pigeon forces”. ‘

According to pigeonresistance’s timeline:

• The Pigeon Resistance comes to light in the St Mark’s Massacre in Venice, Italy, when Italian branch Resistenza Italiana dei Piccioni kills over 10,000 pigeons
• City authorities in Britain, France, Germany, the United States, Spain, Australia and other countries repeatedly deny the existence of a pigeon problem
• Pigeon Resistance membership breaks 100,000 barrier worldwide
• People Against Pigeon Abuse (PAPA) founded to counter Pigeon Resistance
• Despite their denials, several cities quietly implement pigeon clearing programmes
• London passes Pigeons Act, preventing feeding of pigeons in major public squares
• PAPA-UK protests against Pigeons Act in major march
• Pigeon Resistance announces 10,000 people have been dehypnotised by its psychotherapy teams
• Pigeons carrying nuclear waste found in London
• Pigeon Resistance plans International Pigeon Day (P-Day) to demonstrate against Pigeon Terror

All this clearly shows that the human race is so unutterably stupid we probably could be wiped out by pigeons. And it also proves that conclusive proof can be found to back just about anything up. I’ll stick to mild pigeon paranoia for the moment before I turn to the baking soda…

Stand by - the mother ship will now assimilate you

By Hajira Amla

It’s easy to perceive the United States as a huge alien ship hovering over Earth, threatening us with assimilation. Reality, sadly, is always more complex than our idealistic imaginings. For those of us who have friends who are American, or friends that work and live in America, we may feel baffled or torn by the dichotomy between the carefree, friendly face of the American people we know and the illogical, overbearing attitude that is the hallmark of the current US administration.

It seems, to many who have an eye on American politics, that the US’s political framework is rolling into an abyss like a juggernaut with brake failure. In a political system when it’s all about who has the most money to woo congressional candidates with, politicians are often too busy making underhanded policy deals with sponsors to care about the views of the people they are supposed to represent. While the tanks roll across the desert plains of Iraq, crushing the sovereignty of the country beneath its wheels, and gun turrets swinging steadily towards the Iranian border, the people of America dream full-bellied dreams in their beds without the fear that an explosion may destroy their homes.

Political propaganda plays a huge role when it comes to the US’s foreign affairs, as many Americans seem to have a lack of interest or understanding of all things “foreign” to the American Way. Vociferously blaming Al-Qaeda (among other bearded suspects) for all America’s woes abroad serves the interests of the Republicans desperately trying to retain a foothold in the now-urgent scrabble for power ahead of the 2008 presidential elections.

There is no simple cure for this malady that afflicts the United States, and by inference, the rest of the world. Putting more horses into the current two-party race would certainly broaden the scope for change, but politically speaking, Americans generally seem to be pedantic in nature and tend not to test the waters of the unknown. The major push within the Democratic Party is towards no-holds-barred liberalism, which may not necessarily herald positive change in America’s foreign policy towards the Middle East and surrounds. If the Democrats win the next election, they may pull out of Iraq, but what will they focus their attention on instead? “Liberating” every oppressed Muslim woman from her headscarf?

Whether it’s ignoring the Kyoto protocol, vetoing every draft resolution ever conceived at UN headquarters or trying to find an excuse to invade Iran or Syria, there seems to be a severe lack of respectable political figures to put in some criticism to balance media reports. The father of the new South Africa, former President Nelson Mandela, was treated like a senile patient who had escaped from an old age home after criticising the US for ignoring the United Nations prior to dropping the match in the Iraqi oil well.

Expecting the US to stop riding roughshod over everyone else in the world may be nothing more than a pipe dream, no matter who wins the election. Expecting them as a people to get over their dislike for Muslims and a religion they cannot understand may be even more remote. The September 11 attacks jolted US citizens violently from their comfort zone and already patriotic to a fault, the man on Fifth Avenue became psychologically traumatised enough to want to force the world to think, act and behave like him. George W Bush seems to have capitalised on that trauma as an opportunity to further his stockpile of crude oil. Electing someone who can actually read and write this time around may prove to be even more dangerous.

Away from the boardroom, women are a commodity

By Hajira Amla

Cases of rape and sexual abuse perpetrated against women and children no longer make the headlines in South Africa. It has become a fact of life. The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation says that only one in twenty rapes are reported to the police. The South African Police Services has estimated that a rape takes place in this country every 35 seconds. Only 2% of cases brought to court actually result in a conviction.The majority of men in South Africa - regarless of colour, religion or culture - seem to regard women in this democratic country as a commodity. Even so-called “enlightened” men - those who work in corporate environments and who strangely enough seem to genuinely respect women as their colleagues - have the ability to go to a nightclub or bar, point at a woman and say “I want that one” as if she were no more than a particularly fresh-looking loaf of bread on a shop shelf. They no longer feel guilty about cheating on their spouses because in our society we are taught to indulge our every desire.

And regardless of colour, religion or culture, every woman who has ever been raped or sexually abused suffers mental trauma for years or even the rest of her life - long after the physical bruises have healed.

To rape a woman is to reinforce the belief that she exists only for the sexual pleasure of a man, that her life, her intelligence, her desires, her needs and wants melt away in the face of violent desire. Now, even educated, seemingly successful women seem to have been conditioned by society to be promiscuous. Who is to blame? Who is responsible for the popularization of the objectification of women?

No mention is made of the consequences of the thoughtless fulfillment of sexual desires. Ever noticed how long-term relationships are the exception rather than the rule? That the institution of marriage is for “old people”? That multiple partners and the availability of porn seems to be such a commonplace thing? That little children are being sexually abused by their own family members as well as their parent’s lovers? That kids are expected to grow up watching both parents have a string of partners waltz in and out of the bedroom? Do we even wonder why they repeat what they see?

In a democratic society where citizens are so free in their sexual behaviour, the message broadcast to men is that every woman at a social gathering is available for their sexual gratification. Is it a message that is being passed on to our children by adults? Childline released statistics last week that 40% of sexual abuse this year was perpetrated by minors - a shocking statistic and an indication that something has gone seriously wrong in our society. Perhaps the old “verkrampte” morals of yesteryear weren’t so bad after all…

Bhutto - the ultimate political opportunist

By Hajira Amla | Wednesday 14 November 2007

Headlines bandying former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s name about seem to be everywhere you go these days. To give credit where it’s due, once you give the lady a gap, she’s making the news. And there seem to be plenty of holes indeed in Pakistan’s political landscape of late.

Cooly brushing aside past blots on her character such as being twice removed from office on corruption allegations, Bhutto sails into a land already strained with tension over Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf’s dictatorial style, looking deeply into his eyes and promising to share power with him. On Tuesday she dropped Musharraf’s hand and without pausing for breath, food, sleep or political rallying, rushed to woo her former rival, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, currently in exile in Saudi Arabia.

Bhutto supported the Taliban in Afghanistan in 1996, even sending in a unit of Pakistani troops to assist them. Now? They’re the unfashionable turban-wearing terrorists that threaten the “free world”.

After sauntering away unharmed from a political rally in which a bomb attack killed 136 people and injured at least 450, she calmly planned another march opposing emergency rule imposed by the General. The 50 nameless, faceless security guards that were ordered to form a human chain around the bomb-proof truck she was perching in were blown to smithereens, apparently just for the hell of it. No official word still on the culprits… Just more nameless, faceless “Islamists”, we are vaguely led to believe.

Now that she is rubbing her hands together in glee at the PR possibilities of being under house arrest, one has to wonder what convenient bandwagon she will jump on next. She has already set her sights on American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, echoing just about every sentiment the good doctor has to offer. She also has a gold star next to her name in the US’s diplomatic book when she airily praised her now ex-ally General Musharraf for mounting an assault on the Red Mosque in July, saying, “I’m glad there was no ceasefire with the militants in the mosque, because ceasefires simply embolden them” (Associated Press). This remark made plenty of enemies among the people of Pakistan, especially among the families of the hundreds of students believed killed and burned inside the mosque without a trace.

Former cricket legend and now opposition-leader Imran Khan has apparently been thrown into jail for attending a student rally in Lahore, but Associated Press didn’t think that was newsworthy enough for more than two sentences in a huge article lamenting the fact that Bhutto will have to spend another day inside her home. We will have to accustom ourselves to more front-page headlines on Bhutto as she is set to become the new darling of the West, and there seems to be no limit to the amount of bandwagon-jumping this shrewd politician will do to stay there.

Creation - Myth or Fact?

By Hajira Amla

Each day as we go about our daily lives, we seldom appreciate the overwhelming improbabilities that have coincided to make life as we know it. Isaac Asimov correctly pointed out that human “intelligence” and life is the result of a staggering number of massive coincidences in the space-time continuum that we think of as the universe. Did you know that the chances of all these co-incidences occurring again in a galaxy filled with millions of stars are less than a negligible fraction of a percentage point?

The earth’s moon is the largest of these so-called coincidences – it is 1/81 the mass of the earth and one-fourth the diameter of earth, of which its size in relation to its host planet, as far as we know, occurs nowhere else in the galaxy. Usually, natural planetary satellites, which are made from fragments of small asteroids caught in the planet’s gravitational orbit, are tiny in comparison with the planet it orbits, and are thereby quite unable to affect a gravitational pull on the planet itself. Scientists have debated for centuries on the origin of the earth’s moon. The most popular theory at present time is the giant impact hypothesis, the result of a collision between a young earth and a mars-sized planet often referred to as Theia. The floating debris would then have supposedly moulded itself into a sphere over millennia with the help of the earth’s gravity.

Four billion years ago, when life began, the Moon orbited much closer to us than it does now, causing massive tides to ebb and flow every few hours. According to Richard Lathe, a molecular biologist at Pieta Research in Edinburgh, UK, these tides caused dramatic fluctuations in salinity around coastlines which could have driven the evolution of early DNA-like biomolecules. When the massive tides rolled in, the salt concentration was very low. Double-stranded DNA breaks apart under such conditions because electrically charged phosphate groups on each strand repel each other. But when the tides went out, precursor molecules and precipitated salt would have been present in high concentrations. This would have encouraged double-stranded molecules to form, since high salt concentrations neutralise DNA’s phosphate charges, allowing strands to stick together and form organisms.

So when we consider the primordial organisms that developed in the oceans, its unbelievable to think that from it developed a species that created things like cellphones, skyscrapers and weapons of mass destruction!

Apart from the major factor of the moon, we must also bear in mind that if the earth orbited even a few hundred kilometers either closer to or further away from the sun, life on earth would be all but impossible. All these factors, together with just the right combination of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide cannot be a mere coincidence.

How then could we not believe in the intelligent design and creation of the physical dimension we live in? Christian and Jewish scholars have been stuck in the quagmire of literal interpretations of Genesis’s creation story for years, giving evolutionists leverage for mudslinging the idea of intelligent design. Yet it is aptly displayed in many parts of both the Old and New Testaments that a day (Heb: yom) refers to variable periods of time. A day could mean a thousand years or a billion years, yet the phraseology is termed in “days” to set distinct phases in the creation process. According to Islam, however, the Quran discusses the creation process in detail in various places, but does not describe a time frame. The Quran states repeatedly that God is so powerful that all he needs to do is say “Be!” and it is. Whether this can be interpreted in an instantaneous sense or an open-ended sense is subject to opinion. Therefore, Islam cannot summarily refute scientists’ findings that creation took place approximately six billion years ago, but it does refute the concept of accidental or coincidental evolution.

Ultimately, whether the Almighty took six days or six billion years to create the earth and Homo sapiens on it, it could not possibly have been done by any freak accident. Most scientists concur that if creation was indeed left to nature, it would have taken trillions of years to create organisms spontaneously, and even then only under certain circumstances.

The Trinity - Truth or Blasphemy?

By Hajira Amla

A large percentage of Christians today are confused about their own religion. One of the major stumbling blocks on the road to worship is the Doctrine of the Trinity. A survey published in 1968 at Washington University by sociologist Jeffry Hadden reported that 60% of Methodist clergy do not believe in the virgin birth, and over 50% do not believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. 82% do not believe that the Bible is the perfect word of God, and 30% do not believe Trinitarian teachings that Jesus and God the Father are the same being. When a large proportion of clergy do not believe biblical teachings or the tenets of their own faith, one might wonder how effectively they can guide others in the midst of a troubled world. The origins of the Doctrine of Trinity are disturbing to say the least. Like most historic issues pertaining to Christianity, there was much deceit and bloodshed and many lives were lost before ‘Trinitarianism’ was finally adopted.

As many Christians know, the word “trinity” does not appear in the Bible because it is a doctrine which evolved in the early history of the Church. It was a manipulated, bloody and deadly process before it finally arrived as an ‘accepted’ doctrine of the church. CONSTANTINE Flavius Valerius Constantius (c. 285-337 AD), or Constantine the Great, was the son of Emperor Constantius I. When his father died in 306 AD, Constantine became emperor of Britain, Gaul (now France), and Spain. Gradually he gained control of the entire Roman Empire.

Theological differences regarding Jesus (a.s.) began to manifest in Constantine’s empire when two major opponents surfaced and debated whether Christ was a created being (Arian doctrine) or not created but rather coequal and coeternal to God (Athanasius’ doctrine). The theological warfare between the Arian and Athanasian camps became intense. Constantine realized that his empire was being threatened by the doctrinal rift. Constantine, himself a pagan, began to pressure the Church to come to terms with its differences before the results became disastrous to his empire.

Finally, the Emperor called a council at Nicea in 325 AD to resolve the dispute. Three hundred and eighteen bishops attended – approximately only 18% of all the bishops in the empire. Of the 318, about 10 were from the Western part of Constantine’s empire, making the voting hugely biased and uneven.

The present day Christian church touts Constantine as the first Christian emperor, however, his ‘Christianity’ was politically motivated. Whether he personally accepted Christian doctrine is highly doubtful. He had one of his sons murdered in addition to a nephew, his brother in law and possibly one of his wives. He continued to retain his title of high priest in a pagan religion until his death. He was not baptized until he was on his deathbed, by which time, in a reversal of attitude, it is reported he had begun swing his sympathies towards the Arian doctrine of monotheism.

THE NICAEAN CREED

The majority of bishops voted under pressure from Constantine for the Athanasian doctrine. A creed was adopted which favored Athanasius’s theology. Arius was condemned and exiled. Several of the Bishops left before the voting to avoid the controversy. Jesus was approved as being of “one substance” with God the Father. It is interesting that even to this day, the Eastern and Western Orthodox churches disagree with each other regarding this doctrine, the Western churches having had no influence in the ‘voting’. Two of the bishops who voted pro-Arius were also exiled and Arius’s writings were destroyed. Constantine decreed that anyone caught with Arian documents would be subject to the death penalty.

The Nicaean Creed read as follows: “I believe in one God: the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible; “And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God: begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, through whom all things were made.”

Even with the adoption of the Nicaean Creed, problems continued and in a few years, the Arian faction began to regain control. They became so powerful that Constantine restored them and denounced the Athanasian group. Arius’s exile was ended along with the bishops who sided with him.

It was now Athanasius who would be banished. When Constantine died (after being baptized by an Arian Bishop), his son reinstated the Arian philosophy and bishops and condemned the Athanasian group. In the following years the political foes continue to struggle and eventually the Arians were overthrown. The religious/political controversy caused widespread bloodshed and killing. In 381 AD, Emperor Theodosius (a Trinitarian) convened a council in Constantinople. Only Trinitarian bishops were invited to attend. 150 bishops attended and voted to alter the Nicene Creed to include the Holy Spirit as a part of the Godhead. The Trinity doctrine was now official for both the church and the state. Dissident bishops were expelled from the church, and excommunicated.

THE ATHANASIAN CREED

The Athanasian (Trinitarian) Creed was finally established in (probably) the 5th century. It was not written by Athanasius but adopted his name. It stated in part: “We worship one God in Trinity . . . The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God; and yet they are not three gods, but one God.” By the 9th century the creed was established in Spain, France and Germany. It had taken centuries from the time of Christ for the trinity doctrine to catch on. Government and church politics were the reasons the trinity came into existence and became church orthodoxy. As you have seen, the Trinitarian doctrine came from deceit, politics, a pagan emperor and warring factions who brought about death and bloodshed.

“One may say with one’s lips: ‘I believe that God is one, and also three’–but no one can believe it, because the words have no sense.” (What is Religion by Leo Tolstoy). The author of the Doctrine of the Trinity, Anathasuis himself, even confessed that the more he wrote on the matter, the less capable he was of clearly expressing his thoughts regarding it.

CHRITIANITY ALTERED TO SUIT THE PAGANS

Why the original clamor to elevate Jesus (a.s.) and the Holy Spirit to positions equal to the Christian-Judaeo God? Simply put, the pagan world was quite used to having “three gods” or “trinities” as their deities. The trinity satisfied the majority of Christians who had come from pagan backgrounds. Christianity didn’t get rid of the pagan trinities, it adopted them as it did so many other pagan traditions. JEWISH

POSITION ON THE TRINITY

Judaism is strongly monotheistic with no hint of a trinity. The Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) is filled with scriptures such as ‘before Me there was no God formed, Neither shall any be after Me’ (#Isa 43:10 qtd. in Isaiah), and ‘there is no other God…I am the Lord and there is none else’ (#Isa 45:14,18 qtd. in Isaiah). A Jewish commentary affirms that ‘[no] other gods exist, for to declare this would be blasphemous…’ (Chumash 458). ISLAMIC STANCE Islam totally rejects the Trinity. Allah says in the Qur’an: “They do blaspheme who say: Allah is one of three in a Trinity, for there is no god except One Allah.” (Qur’an 5:73).

So, while Christianity may have a problem defining the essence of God, such is not the case in Islam. In fact, the message of Islam is so simple, that even a Bedouin nomad could understand.

There are many verses in the Qur’an relating to the divinity of Jesus (a.s.), however the word “Trinity” only appears in the Qur’an in verses 4:171 and 5:73: “O People of the Book, commit no excesses in your religion; nor say of God anything but the truth. The Messiah Jesus son of Mary was (no more than) a Messenger of God, and His Word, which He bestowed on Mary, and a Spirit proceeding from Him; so believe in God and His Messengers. Say not “Trinity”: desist! It will be better for you: for God is One: Glory be to Him! (far exalted is He) above having a son. To Him belong all things in the heavens and on earth. And enough is God as a Disposer of affairs.” (Qur’an 4:171) “They do blaspheme who say: God is one of three in a Trinity: for there is no god except One God. If they desist not from their word (of blasphemy), verily a grievous penalty will befall the blasphemers among them.” (Qur’an 5:73)

Often when the simplicity and straightforwardness of the Qur’an is placed next to the Bible for comparison, many Christians find a sense of relief in finally understanding the simple truth about Jesus (a.s.) and his purpose – the very thing we have been confused about all our lives. Little did we know that Islam even had anything to say about him!

I hope that Insha-Allah many more will find peace and contentment in Islam. Sources: wikipedia.com angelfire.com islamicinvitationcentre.com Hadden, Jeffrey: 1968 University of Washington study