As the FaithWorld blogger, Aziz El-Kaissouni, notes, this is a good example how Muslim states enlist “Islamic scholars into echoing the government’s grievances with an added Islamic flavour”. No Orientalism here, I am afraid. The more uncomfortable truth may be that a major Muslim institution is acting in the service of an autocratic regime (with the added phenomenon that it is ‘nationalising’ itself further).

Iran has responded by saying the film does no represent the official view of the state and has been made by a “private organisation”. On this point, El-Kaissouni notes:

[Iran’s official stance regarding the documentary] is one of the cultural issues that pops up every time something like this happens. During the Danish cartoons controversy, various figures in the religious or political establishments of Muslim countries demanded the offending paper and artists be prosecuted. They seemed to operate on the assumption that all states can control media output in their countries, as many Muslim and Arab governments do.

I don’t know if this response by Arab religious and political establishment figures can be necessarily called a ‘cultural issue’. I suggest it is more likely these establishment figures are interested in shoring up their political power. I do agree, however, that culture may play a part in what can or cannot be subjected to media scrutiny and intensity in different countries.

Prof James Pounder, the acting provost of Abu Dhabi University, who comes from Sheffield, thought there were dangers as Dubai became increasingly popular with – and affordable to – younger, less sophisticated people. It was not just that some would behave as badly as Ms Palmer and Mr Acors had allegedly done, he said; there was also likely to be a long-term impact on Emirati youth. Prof Pounder said when he moved to Hong Kong in 1984, local youngsters were quiet and demure; when he left 21 years later, they were thoroughly westernised.

The challenge facing Dubai and the rest of the UAE, he said, was to retain its traditional values. It would not be easy. “Young Emiratis will be influenced,” he said. “The question is, by how much and what can the country do about it?”

Probability is […] the philosophical success story of the first half of the twentieth century. To speak of philosophical success will seem the exaggeration of a scholar. Turn then to the most worldly affairs. Probability and statistics crowd in upon us. The statistics of our pleasures and our vices are relentlessly tabulated. Sports, sex, drink, drugs, travel, sleep, friends — nothing escapes. There are more explicit statements of probabilities presented on American prime time television than explicit acts of violence […] Our public fears are endlessly debated in terms of probabilities: chances of meltdowns, caners, muggings, earthquakes, nuclear winters, AIDS, global greenhouses, what next? There is nothing to fear (it may seem) but the probabilities themselves. This obsession with the changes of danger, and with treatments for changing the odds, descends directly from the forgotten annals of nineteenth century information and control.

– Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance.

http://tinyurl.com/3qqhua

Question: Is “Pop Islam” better than “no Islam”?