Flicken's Blog

Ich bin Flicken, ja! Traditional Islam, food, guns, camping, grammar, Canadianna, Arabic, stuff.

Friday, November 30, 2007

Moving Apart Through Efficiency & Literacy

"Speak to a live person now" on a website means, "pick up a plastic device, put it close to your head, hear the other other person's disembodied voice and reply." It doesn't actually mean, "Speak to a live person." Here in Jordan, speaking to a live person really means speaking to them, face-to-face. Trying to get things done over the phone is very often frustrating and ineffective. After a short conversation on the phone, the person on the other end will likely tell you to come over to discuss the matter in person. You will go all the way there to discover something that you could have been told over the phone. If you're frustrated by this inefficiency, people here just won't get it. Do you consider saying, "Good morning" inefficient? It's the same thing to them. As for posting all the necessary information onto a checklist onto a website, it is virtually non-existent here.

In the West, speaking to a live person is often considered a backup: companies and government offices try to encourage you to read their websites, navigate their voicemail system, submit a ticket, and do just about anything before speaking to someone. Time is money. Labour is expensive. Furthermore, we all know that it's mainly our moms who call in for support because they can't figure out how the website works or where to get the necessary information. The reason why us computer-savvy users don't call in is because we are more computer literate. Thus, there are two issues that push Western society towards disconnected communication: efficiency and literacy.

While there are certainly a great deal of people-oriented individuals in the West, business (including government offices) are run in a task-oriented manner. It appears that Jordan (and I can't comment on countries I haven't lived in, but I doubt this is limited to Jordan) hasn't yet grasped task-orientation as the way to go about business. People don't really have any appreciation for time. Once I requested to meet my daughter's school principal. The secretary gave me a time to come by. I got leave from work and came to the school, prepared to discuss some issues. I was told that she was in a meeting and should try back in another hour. I was confused: were they not aware that I took time out of my schedule and got leave from work to come here? Were they not aware that they had told me to come at this time? Did they think I sat around all day waiting for something to do so that I could pop in at any old time according to their whims? The ladies in the office just kind of stared at me. (I must have provided a conversation piece later that day about stressed out foreigners.) Another time, the secretary of my other daughter's school asked me for a certified copy of her passport. I told her a certified copy would mean that I had to take time off of work twice (once to deliver the passport and once to pick it up) as well as 40 JD. She told me, "OK, so just bring a photocopy." If a photocopy would do, then why did she ask for a certified copy? Yet another time I went to go pick up a free cellphone that I was owed as part of my calling plan. It took me over 30 minutes of my work day to get there and around 2.50 JD. I told the man behind the counter I wanted the free phone. He told me, "They're not in. Try back tomorrow." A young lady asked me what I was looking for and I told her. She pulled out the boxed phone and gave it to me.

One shouldn't be under the impression that Jordanians are inconsiderate. It's not that they don't respect your time. Rather, they don't respect anyone's time, even their own. A friend told me that a worker came from Zarqa to Amman to work on his house. When he found the man outside his door, he asked, "Why didn't you call? What if I wasn't here?" The man said, "That's OK. I would have waited." On a number of occasions, my Jordanian in-laws have appeared at my door for a visit without calling. If we're not around, they visit someone else in the area. Sometimes they return home without visiting us because we were out. These are people who really take, "It's the journey, not the destination" as a way of life.

While the efficiency of results-orientation is what drives disconnected communication, it's literacy that makes it possible. The reason why Mom needs to call customer support is because she isn't computer literate. Even before computer proliferation, government offices in Western countries had printed out sheets with checklists of what was needed for a passport, driver's license, etc. While formalized law (including fiqh) is no stranger to Muslim heartlands, it has remained the realm of the specialized. The ability to think clearly through requirements, carefully write them out and read them with comprehension does not yet exist among Jordanian people by and large. Clear writing as well as reading with comprehension are the basics of literacy, as they reflect the ultimate goal of education: clear thinking. The lack of widespread literacy in Jordan is yet another indication that the educational system has quite a way to go.

Monday, November 26, 2007

The Fish Fat Cure

When I lived in Canada, I worked out 3-5 times a week. I found that if I increased my running speed above a certain point, my legs felt like they were going to pop out of my hips later that day and I'd get pins and needles in one of my legs. As soon as I brought my speed back down to a reasonable rate, everything was fine.

When I came to Jordan, I found that I couldn't work out for two weeks without going through excruciating pain. Even when I'd run at a reasonable pace, after three to four days of running, my shins would hurt so much that sitting for prayer was difficult. Furthermore, my elbow and forearm would get so sore that I had to stop lifting altogether for some time.

After a while, I remembered that I would eat a lot of fish in Canada. In particular, I'd eat a lot of freshly baked pink salmon. You see, what had a cat named Fahd. It appears to me (and I'm no scholar) that it is not permissible to buy most cat food, as it contains unslaughtered dead animals, which are impure and impermissible to buy. We examined the possibility of buying Fahd canned fish, but being that we were in beautiful British Columbia, the cheapest thing to feed him was pink salmon. My ex-wife had a lot of compassion for Fahd, so she'd always make sure that there was some baked pinked salmon ready to feed him. When I'd come home and find that there wasn't anything else to eat (or at least, no other animal flesh), I'd share a meal with Fahd. Hey, I was paying for this stuff, and if he had issues with it, he could find another owner who would feed him kibble. I was also assured that if I finished his food, my ex-wife would see to it that we bought more fish and prepared it for him. After all, she felt sorry for Fahd, seeing that he couldn't cook for himself. This is not to mention that I worked in downtown Vancouver and, when hungry, I'd often buy sushi, nor the times that my ex-wife cooked a fish meal for human consumption that I also partook in. Overall, I was probably eating fish 3-5 times a week.

Here in Jordan, almost all fish is either frozen or canned. The, "fresh" fish you see in some places has been previously frozen and thawed out. I decided that I was going to start doping myself with fish fat again. I started taking cod liver oil (which one should be careful about, as some brands are contaminated with heavy metals) by the spoon and buying a steady supply of canned fatty fish: salmon, tuna, and sardines. I don't eat most vegetable oils, so I had to search around to find tuna in water. Sardines in water are pretty much impossible to find here, so I had to settle for Thai/Filipino style sardines in tomato sauce. I also want canned mackerel, but I'm unable to find it. At C-Town, I found some smoked mackerel at 2.50 for 0.25 kg. I decided to pass.

After eating a steady diet of fish fat, my joints and bones hurt a lot less. I'm able to continue exercising, though I still do have some pain.

And now, for a recipe. As a master chef, I don't use measurements:

Ingredients
  • Canned salmon
  • Curry powder
  • Raisins or chopped dates
  • Ground coconut (optional)
Directions: Mash the canned salmon in its water with a fork in a T-Fal frying pan. Add raisins or dates, curry, and coconut. Stir together on low heat until the raisins become plump or you fear burning the stuff. Serve with pita bread. I personally prefer highly toasted, crispy pita bread with this dish.

Of course, this blog entry would not be complete without me giving you my self-qualified opinion on the best fish money can buy. If you really want the king of fatty and delicious fish, go for a spring (aka chinook) salmon caught off the west coast of Vancouver Island during the winter. These are called, "winter springs." Make sure its flesh is white, and that it has stripes of fat on the inside of it's belly. Bigger is better: as these fish grow in size, their fat content increases. I bought a four-foot fish off the pier in Richmond and sawed steaks off the beast. It would drip fat while baking and was possibly the most succulent fish I've ever eaten. I also bought a nice big tuna off the pier and sawed off steaks. It was also fatty and succulent. If you're into sushi, go for salmon roe and toro (tuna belly meat). Avoid most commercially-served salmon unless you know it's wild caught. It's mainly Atlantic salmon, which is generally farmed. Canned salmon is wild caught, as the flesh of farmed salmon is too soft to can.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Classes with the Mufti of Jordan

The Mufti of Jordan, Nuh Ali Salman Al-Qudah, holds public classes in Masjid Al-Tillawi in Jubeiha every Sunday after isha. He is currently teaching from the chapter on the lawful and the prohibited from Ihya Uloom Al-Deen. Once he completes that, he will likely start teaching the fiqh of social and financial interactions from Umdat Al-Salik (Reliance of the Traveller). The classes are in Arabic.

Petra

November 20th was election day in Jordan. Seeing that I'm not Jordanian and can't vote, I decided to make the best of the day off by going to Petra. The thing that had stopped me from going earlier was the cost: 21 JD per person for foreigners. Given that my children and I are four foreigners, I wasn't willing to pay 84 JD to see some rocks. After all, I could google images of Petra and insert our pictures into the background to make it look like we went. I really wanted to go, though, so I asked the people JETT, a bus line in Jordan that does trips to Petra. They told me that I had to pay 21 JD per person, even though I had a yearly residency. Someone told me to call the Ministry of Tourism. They told me that, according to the law, people with an annual residency had to be treated like nationals, so it would be 1 JD for me and every child 13 years of age or older.

We started our trip by taking the JETT bus from Abdali at 6:30 AM the next day. By the time we reached Petra, toured the facilities, and waited for my oldest daughter to clean the effects of her obligatory travel sickness off herself, it was 10:30 AM. (I really have to buy her a sticker that says, "Barfing on trips since 1996.") It turns out that children under 15 are free. (Actually, I'm not sure if it's all children, or just children with an annual residency.) I ended up paying a whopping 1 JD. So, JETT misinformed me even though it was to there benefit to find out the truth. Furthermore, even the Ministry of Tourism didn't have the facts quite straight, as they told me I'd have to pay for my son, who is thirteen, whereas I didn't have to.

We walked on the wide dirt road towards the Siq. Bedouins would keep asking me to ride their carriages and horses. Finally, we reached the Siq (which was cold because it gets very little sun) and walked through the long, narrow, winding valley until we reached the Khazneh, pictured above. From this point on, bedouins are everywhere, trying to sell you a camel ride, overpriced refreshments, postcards, trinkets and trash. There are bedouins who speak German, Spanish, and English. There are even old bedouin women who speak English. While the young bedouin women would ask passing Europeans if they wanted to buy something, they wouldn't ask me. I hate to boast, but people who don't know me think I'm a part of the religious police and seem to be intimidated of me.

After the Khazneh, we walked through the main stretch, passing by the houses carved into the mountains. It reminded me of verses in Surah Al-Hijr:
و لقد كذب أصحاب الحجر المرسلين و آتيناهم آياتنا فكانوا عنها معرضين و كانوا ينحتون من الجبال بيوتا آمنين فأخذتهم الصيحة مصبحين فما أغنى عنهم ما كانوا يكسبون
meaning (approximately):
Truly, the inhabitants of the tract denied the Messengers. We sent them Our signs but they would turn away from them. And they would carve homes from the mountains in safety. So, the alarm took them by morning and what they used to do availed them not.
Qur'anic commentators mention that these verses refer to the land of the ancient Arabic tribe of Thamud, the people of the Prophet Salih (peace be upon him) who lived between Medina and the Levant. However, it is unlikely that they were actually inhabitants of Petra: the Prophet Muhammad (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) passed by the land of Thamud on the way from Medina to Tabuk, which is south of Jordan. Rather, Thamud probably resided in Madain Saleh. It seems possible that the believers from Thamud who escaped from the punishment that befell their tribe may have taken refuge in nearby Jordan and built homes in the same style that they were used to. Of course, this is mere speculation.

The residential area was in direct sunlight. When the wind wasn't blowing, it would get fairly warm. When we reached the end of the residential area, a couple bedouins asked us if we wanted to ride their donkeys up to the Deir. By this point, both pairs of Energizer batteries that I bought for the trip had died out. I bought some Kodak batteries from one of the bedouin merchants. They were so weak that they couldn't even power on my camera. (Yes, they were new and they expired 2010.) The four of us (my wife was too busy voting that day, so she didn't come) rode donkeys up with the bedouins for 12 JD. Because my batteries were dead, I didn't take pictures on the beautiful ride up the mountain.

During the ride, I made small talk with one of the bedouins. I wanted to see how much they still preserved their culture. I asked Atallah, my guide, if they owned sheep and goats. I had seen horses, donkeys, and camels, but no goats or sheep. "Of course;", he said, "don't think we're peasants (Ar. fallaheen). We're bedouins." I remember my brother-in-law, who had lived among the Arab tribes of Egypt during his drug-busting operations with the Egyptian police, tell me that if you ever want to royally annoy a bedouin, ask him which peasant community he's from. The bedouins see themselves as humans par excellence: they are undomesticated. They are truly free, uncorrupted by social pressure and unintimidated by the fear of losing their homes. In fact, they have no homes. They live in camel-hair tents that they roll up and take with them. Just like wild animals, bedouins are essentially wild humans: if shot, they will not surrender; rather, they will flee or fight until death. The bedouins see peasants as domesticated humans: a weak people who could historically be bullied into paying khaweh (tribute) to the neighbouring bedouin tribes in exchange for them sparing them from being raided. This is the source behind bedouin pride. Of course, most of Jordan's bedouins have been settled and know no more about camels than I do, but traditional memes die hard.

I asked Atallah, "What's that plant called?" He told me. I asked him what it's good for and he said, "It produces flowers but the halal (a Jordanian word meaning sheep and goats) eat it while it's small." We approached another bush and I asked him, "What's that?" He told me, "It's diflah. It's too bitter for anything to eat." When I inquired whether camels eat it, he told me, "If they did, it wouldn't look untrimmed like that." I remembered how my wife would describe things that tasted bitter as being like diflah, and now I saw the proverbial plant. The reason I asked him what the plants were called is because it is one of the best ways to find out if people are still in tune with their traditional lifestyle. So far, he passed these tests. I asked him if they live in hair tents or in buildings. He said they have hair tents, but they live in brick buildings, like the ones in Wadi Musa. I then asked him how they pronounced the kaf when speaking to a woman, and provided an example. Basically, I wanted to find out if they pronounced it chaf, like the Northern Jordanians. He said, "No, that's city speak. We're bedouins." I told him that the bedouins of the north pronounced it that way. His cousin, Saleem (the other guide), assured him that there were also bedouins in the north. Alas, the honour and value of Northern Jordan was redeemed in Atallah's eyes.

On the way up the mountain, I soothed my screaming daughters with reassuring words as the donkeys teetered and jerked their way up. Because I spoke on impulse, I spoke in English. Atallah asked me how many languages I spoke. I told him two: Arabic and English. He told me that he spoke seven languages. During the course of the small talk, I told him I was originally from Egypt. On the way, he introduced me to a middle-aged European-looking woman and told me, "She's Egyptian." I asked her, with a puzzled look on my face, "You're Egyptian?" She explained that her husband was Egyptian and that she had lived a number of years in Alexandria. I asked her if she was American. She was Dutch. During the climb up the mountains, the donkeys made the decisions and we rode obediently. We passed by a bunch of pedestrians coming down the hillside on the steps. I apologized, explaining that I couldn't control the donkey, as it basically forced them off the steps onto the dirt. The man had no clue what I was saying and said something angrily in some language I didn't understand. Atallah spoke to him and later explained to me that he was speaking Spanish.

Finally, we reached the top of the mountain where we disembarked off the donkeys and walked the remaining distance to the Deir. Outside the Deir, a tiny bedouin girl named Tamam approached us to see where we were from. I told her from Amman and asked her age: she was eight. The wind was blowing hard that day and sand was flying in our faces. It would have been smart to wear a shimagh to wrap around one's face. Tamam explained that the winds were easterly that day. It was strange how such a little person knew this when most North American adults would probably have no clue. The Deir was too much of a site for me not to photograph, so I reinserted my Energizer batteries into my camera and squeezed out a little more life out of them. When Engergizer batteries run low, the camera turns off automatically. However, the Kodak batteries weren't even powerful enough to turn the camera on to begin with.

I bought myself another silver ring from the bedouins by the Deir. We inquired about the price of chips, but they were way, way overpriced, so we skipped them and started our descent. Time was running late: we had to catch the bus back at 4 PM. At what seemed like a snail's pace, we made our way down the mountain, through the residential area, past the Khazneh, and through the Siq. My youngest daughter found it too much and cried occasionally. We'd stop and then continue the trek forward, while I panicked about missing the bus. Finally, when we got out of the Siq, I was approached by some bedouins who asked if we wanted to ride horses back to the main entrance. After a minor bit of haggling, we agreed that all four of us would ride for 10 JD. We rode the horses to visitor's centre, prayed, caught the bus, and then the kids passed out.

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Saturday, November 17, 2007

Transliterating the Hard & Soft 'G' Into Arabic

In previous posts, I spoke about how certain letters are pronounced. Today I want to look at how the soft and hard 'g' sounds are transcribed from foreign words into Arabic script. I know of four methods:
  1. In Saudi Arabia, the soft 'g' sound is written as a jeem and the hard 'g' sound is written as a qaf. This agrees with the common pronunciations of qaf and jeem in that country. However, sometimes people pronounce qaf in its Qur'anic way. I remember hearing a Saudi woman asking her daughter تبغي قاطو (tibghi qateau), "Do you want qateau?" Maybe she pronounced the qaf in its Qur'anic manner because she was unfamiliar with the word. Arabs often default to Qur'anic pronunciation when they don't know a word.
  2. In Egypt, the soft 'g' sound is written as the Persian letter cheh () and the hard 'g' sound is written as jeem, which is pronounced geem in the urban Egyptian dialect anyway. I remember seeing جرا written in Egypt once and wondering, "What is jarach?"
  3. In Jordan, both the hard and soft 'g' are written as the letter jeem. This has brought a new phenomenon into Arabic phonetics: the ambiguity of a letter's pronunciation.
  4. The hard 'g' is also sometimes transliterated as a ghayn and pronounced that way (i.e. without attempting to pronounce it as a hard 'g' at all). This is certainly what was done historically. In Arabic, Pythagoras is written فيثاغورس Feethaghoris. The Levant and Saudi Arabia use this method for words like, "gram", which end up becoming غرام ghram in Arabic. The problem is that vowels are not written in Arabic, so this ends up looking like the word for ardour (Ar. gharam). Egypt transliterates, "gram" with a jeem, or should I say geem?
A problem occurs when transliterated words cross boundaries among Arab states. One is left guessing regarding which pronuciation was intended. There are two brand names called Goody on the supermarket shelves in Jordan: one is written with a jeem and the other is written with a qaf. This problem sometimes manifests itself as a mispronunciation of a foreign word. In Jordan, they refer to a catalogue as cataloj and shrimpas jamberi (from the Italian gamberi). Similarly, the French word for, "soft drink" is boisson gazeuse. The word gazeuse is written with a qaf, so the urban residents of Egypt and the Levant pronounce it azzoozah.

Friday, November 16, 2007

Jordan's Workforce: You've Got a Long Way to Go, Baby

It is very important for Jordan to remain a happy place. As the saying goes, "Kill a man's father, and he'll forgive you after 10 years; keep him hungry and he'll never forgive you." Jordan is the opium of displaced Palestinians: they have more rights and freedoms here than in any other Arab country. In Jordan, they can have a cushy income, get on with their lives, and almost feel at home. As such, Jordan's economy is borne by US aid and its political system is one of the best among all Arab countries. This is by necessity: were migrant Palestinians to remain disgruntled, they would likely give Israel a huge headache. However, the constant influx of US aid gives people the wrong impression. Jordan's workforce needs some serious improvements if the local economy is going to progress. Jordan's workforce suffers from the culture of 3eib, poor education and skills, and lacks service-orientation.

For those who aren't familiar with it, the culture of 3eib (which can be approximately translated as, "shame", but is not as strong) has strong roots in Jordan. A few generations ago, most Jordanians were bedouins or farmers. Earning a livelihood meant tending your animals, caring for your land, or trading. Actually working for someone was for servants. This attitude remains today and impedes people's willingness to participate in jobs that they see as below them. If you ride an airport taxi, the driver will most likely not help you loading your luggage into the vehicle. Rather, he'll just watch you do it on your own. God forbid that you would think less of him for actually helping you out. Without doubt, these drivers help women and the elderly, because they see that as chivalrous. Similarly, neighbours and friends will help one out. However, when there is no romantic (and I mean this word in its general sense) motive -- when helping out is just a part of one's job -- it doesn't happen. One can't help noticing in Jordan that the majority of manual and skilled labour is done by Egyptian workers. It's not that all Jordanians have higher-paying jobs, or even jobs at all. Rather, they simply refuse to do labour for someone else. Unemployment is more noble in their eyes than an honest day's work. Another example of the culture of 3eib is where women will refuse to do certain tasks because it is unbefitting of them. Ask a woman at work to help carry her own keyboard and mouse from one desk to another and you'll likely just get ignored. Women aren't to carry anything in this culture. OK, so let me get this straight: women are supposed to be paid and respected on par with men, but are allowed to refuse tasks that they are able to perform because they're not culturally acceptable? If a woman wants to live her romantic ideals, she can stay home and have her father or husband support her.

Jordan's education reminds me of what I faced in the United States: people would graduate from university with a degree in computer science and not be able to program to save their lives. (Yes, I realize that the US boasts many of the best universities in the world, but it is also possible for a complete dolt to graduate from an American university. There are no national standards for university degrees.) You'd be hard-pressed to find a world-renowned Jordanian intellectual or company. Compare this to neighbouring Egypt who, in the past century produced the likes of: John Atalla (who, despite his name, is a Muslim), Taher Elgamal, Naguib Mahfouz, Ahmed Zewail, and Mohamed Elbaradei. All of these people received their undergraduate education in Egypt. Impoverished Egypt also boasts the strongest local (as opposed to imported) technical talent in the Arab world: not only did Sakhr emerge from Egypt, but Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco all set up in Egypt. On the religious front, Jordan's official state radio for the Ministry of Endowments is dominated by Egyptian speakers, scholars, and reciters. It also hosts a Syrian scholar and a number of Saudi reciters. Jordanian scholars and reciters do have presence on state radio, but are almost a minority in their own country. On the level of artisans, don't expect much in Jordan. If you want a truly fine piece of Arabic clothing or art, it's not going to be produced locally. I had an exquisite jubba hand-made for me in Egypt about ten years ago for which I paid approximately 600 Egyptian pounds. Regardless of how much I'd be willing to pay, I wouldn't be able to get such an article in Jordan: the skills simply don't exist. The same goes for metallurgy and calligraphy: look to Egypt, Syria, Turkey, or Iraq.

Finally, and this is connected to the culture of 3eib, Jordan's service industry is in shambles. As a simple example, I took my wife on boat rides in Aqaba and Alexandria. There is no comparison. In Alexandria, we were greeted by a smiling, smartly-dressed skipper and boarded the boat off a pier. The skipper gave us his back so that my wife could remove her face veil while I photographed her against the backdrop of the Mediterranean sea. In Aqaba, we had to walk through sand and water to board the boat. However, the worst part was when the shabbily-dressed, grumpy skipper got into a yelling match with his peers for charging us too little. Now I realize that Egypt has been a tourist destination for the past five millennia but what's particularly amusing is how much Jordan pushed for Petra to be one of the new, commercially-funded, Seven Wonders of the World before developing its service industry properly.

Choosing an Apartment in Amman

In North America, choosing one apartment over another isn't really such a big deal. In Jordan, it is. While in North America you look at the community, schools, and ease with which you can get around, in Jordan, you look for basic comfort. If you choose wrong, you'll live in misery. Here's my advice:
  1. Don't live on the top floor. Insulation doesn't generally exist. If you live on the top floor, you'll be hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Make that very cold. Furthermore, water arrives a couple days a week in Amman. It gets stored in tanks that are typically on the roof of your home. If you live on the top floor, water pressure will drop significantly as the tanks empty out. At one place I lived in, taking a shower while someone washed the dishes was very difficult.
  2. If you're a North American family of four or more, you won't be able to live on one tank (2000 L) of water per week. You'll need to get yourself another tank. Alternatively, if your apartment has an underground tank (which they mistakenly refer to as a well (Ar. beer) in Jordan) and a pump, you can always pump water when you run out. If you're going to live with such a setup, then make sure that you have the freedom to use the pump whenever you want. If you have to get your landlord to run the pump for you, it's just not going to work in the middle of the night or when your landlord is out. Also, it's going to grate at your relationship.
  3. If you live in a tall building at the top of a hill, make sure the building has an underground tank and a pump that you have the freedom to use at any time. This is true even if you have two tanks. Water flows from the municipal reservoir according to gravity, so if you're on a hill in a tall building and the tanks are above the building, they're only going to get water when all the tanks in the lower-lying areas have filled. In all likelihood, your tanks (however many they are) won't fill up.
  4. Make sure you have an electric water heater. Having to pump diesel in the middle of the summer just to get some hot water is a drag.
  5. Apartment windows typically have shutters that help keep out the cold. Make sure you don't have an unprotected glass door in your bedroom that will let out all the heat in the winter.
  6. Don't use electric heat. Many electric heaters don't work very well unless you put them underneath your shirt. Those that do work will cost you a fortune in electrical costs. Many are also made to the safety standards of Chernobyl. I lost count of how many times my electric heater caught on fire last year.
  7. Make sure you have south and west facing windows. South facing windows ensure that you'll get sun most of the day. Just face the direction for prayer (which is nearly due south in Amman). If there are windows in that direction in most of the house, you're set. West facing windows ensure that you get sun in the late afternoon and wind during the summer. It's even better if you have east facing windows as well.

Not Exactly Fan Mail

A co-worker suggested that my profile picture resembled Shrek with Puss in Boots. OK, maybe that's how I look before makeup, but how would they know?

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Peaceful Muslims Banned

If you want to make headlines as a Muslim, you pretty much have two choices: denounce some fundamental Islamic practice or become a terrorist. If you want to hold on to Islamic principles and be reasonable about incorporating these into society, you're asking too much. The Muslim Brotherhood, of which I am not a member (for ideological reasons), has been trying to bring Islamic principles into Egyptian politics for decades. The results are: military tribunals, imprisonment, torture, humiliation, and legal banning. A recent article in the Guardian details the latest antics of the Egyptian government.

The Egyptian government can't quite grasp the fact that they can't control people indefinitely. If you don't allow people to vent politically, they will eventually vent in other ways. For a country that underwent a revolution in 1952 and had its president assassinated in 1981, it doesn't seem to be learning very quickly.

Releasing the Dinar from the Dollar

Unless you've avoided reading the news for the past year, you've probably noticed that the value of the US dollar has been plummeting. The dollar's value has fallen so much that it is illegal to melt or export (for the purpose of melting) US coins: the value of a penny or nickel is less than the value of the metal contained in it.

Here in Jordan, the dinar is tied to the dollar: 1 USD = 0.708 JOD, amen. It never changes. The dinar has no valuation independent of the dollar. While the dollar slides against world currencies, so does the dinar. This means that imported items become more expensive. In Jordan, virtually everything is imported. This is at least in part reason for the high rate of inflation.

Would setting up an independent valuation for the dinar help? I really don't understand economics and don't know if that would make things better or worse.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

The Rise of Traditional Muslims as a Niche Market

Conventional business wisdom says that there are three ways to compete: price, quality, and by choosing a niche market. In The End of Advertising as We Know It, it says that, "broadcasters must change their mass audience mind-set to cater to niche consumer segments." Seeing that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the US and the world, marketing to Muslims makes sense. However, the specific subculture of those who identify themselves as, "traditional Muslims" in the West should be targeted more than others.

Traditional Muslims are Sunni Muslims who follow one of the four orthodox schools of jurisprudence and often have an interest in Sufism (Islamic spirituality) and stand juxtaposed to another major group of Sunnis: the Salafis. The Arabic term for a devotee of Sufism is faqir (pl. fuqara), which literally means, "an impoverished person". Far from wearing patched clothing and eating barley bread, the spread of traditional Islam in the West has bred a new class of rich fuqara. To dumb it down for non-Muslims looking to target this segment, you can think of this demographic as Muslim hippies with disposable income.

The first quality of traditional Muslims that makes them marketable is their appreciation for beauty. These are people who take the statement of the Prophet Muhammad (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam), "Allah is Beautiful and loves beauty" as a way of life. Once the Prophet Muhammad (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) asked a shoddily-dressed man if he had any wealth. When the man mentioned the types of wealth he had, the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) told him, "Allah loves to see the effects of His blessings upon His slave." While Salafis also believe in these same teachings, it doesn't translate to practice for them in the same way it does for traditional Muslims.

Secondly, traditional Muslims draw inspiration from a large variety of Islamic subcultures, both old and new: Andalusian, Turkish, Muslim Chinese, Malaysian, Indian, North African, West African, Syrian, Yemeni. They are also not opposed to integrating elements from non-Muslim cultures. If you wanted to sell traditional Muslims an Alpaca fibre prayer mat with South American Indian designs on it, that might just work. Salafis, on the other hand, look to modern day Saudi Arabia as their cultural and religious icon, which means that the inspiration for products targeted towards them is limited.

Thirdly, traditional Muslims are generally more educated in the liberal and fine arts and are more westernized than Salafis. A lot of niche marketing has to do with producing a nice story for your products with some accompanying snooty copy. People who are actually literate in English, collect calligraphy, read mystical poetry, and buy organic are going to buy your fine products for a premium if you market them right.

Some companies that appeal to traditional Muslims include: SHUKR (which aims at being a sort of Gap for Muslims), Islamica Magazine, Oriscent, and Uns Finecrafts.

Monday, November 12, 2007

Arabic Poetry Regarding Google

I thought up the first half of this line of poetry and a co-worker thought up the second half:
فليجوجل السائل وليجد منيته فبالجوجلة صار علمنا يكتسب
meaning, "Let the questioner google and find his desire, for through googling our knowledge is gained." This is actually valid Arabic poetry and follows the same metre as the famous Adab Al-Tariq poem and can be sung in the same manner.

Microsoft Word & Privacy

Recently, a friend of mine was egogoogling when he found a hit. He usually comes up with nothing. He noticed that his name was at the bottom of an article I had posted a couple years ago on a Yahoo group. At the time I posted it, I was using a copy of Microsoft Word licensed to him. I had exported HTML from MS Word and posted it to the Yahoo group. Obviously, at the time, his name did not appear in the rendered HTML or I would have removed it. Now, it does appear, meaning that it was always present in the unrendered HTML. This has implications for those who think they can use MS Word to produce HTML and publish it anonymously to a website.

OK, so maybe I'm naive.

Banned in Syria?

A friend from Syria is never able to visit my blog. If anyone can read this from Syria, please drop me a note.

This blog is viewable from Egypt.

Friday, November 09, 2007

On Pluralism & Sin

While Christianity teaches that God created man in His image, people often try to do the opposite. For example, the ancient Greek gods were little more than supernatural humans. Fast forward to the age of pluralism: I'm OK, you're OK, we're all OK. OK? While sins against other people are, out of necessity, widely recognized, the concept of a sin against God is vanishing from our collective religious cognition. I would venture to say that the majority of Christian preachers in America who speak out against homosexuality (and they are dwindling in number) will try to address it as socially destructive. It is no longer sufficient to say that it is a sin against God. After all, you and I are nice: we wouldn't object to someone doing something that didn't affect us, so why would God? We wouldn't ever think of punishing someone eternally for disobeying us, would we? Therefore, it follows by projection that there's no such thing as eternal damnation.

One expects to find such reasoning among secular people. However, it is becoming more popular among the religious as well. There are entire faith movements, such as those run by Joel Osteen, that focus almost entirely on the feel-good factor. The phenomenon is not limited to Christians: secular Muslims, and the so-called Goofy Sufis, who focus entirely on spirituality while ignoring the Law, are guilty of this as well. Scripture speaks for itself: sin against God exists. It's really a matter of sincerity before the Divine: is Scripture to be read according to our preconceived notions of how we'd run the world if we were in charge, or is it time that we realized we aren't in charge and figured out what is expected of us? The stakes are high: redemption is based on atonement and no one would ask the forgiveness of someone who has no rights over them. The first step, therefore, is to recognize God's rights over one.

The flimsy defense used by those who want to ignore the Law is that it's what's in the heart that matters. What kind of a heart claims purity but does not recognize the rights of God?

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Do Unto Others As They Will Do Unto You

Life is a learning process. I used to bug my childhood friend, telling him he looked Jewish. (OK, maybe we all look the same to you non-Semites.) This came back to haunt me: once when I was walking back from work wearing black pants, black shoes, and carrying a black bag and umbrella, a teenager started making gluttoral grunts as I passed. Before I could figure out exactly what he was getting at, the girl next to him said, "Don't make fun of him, my father's Jewish." Another time I was on an airplane sitting next to a born-again Christian. She turned to me all excited and asked, "Are you Israeli?" I guess I kind of looked like the illustrations she'd seen in Bible class. These sorts of things happened a number of times, and each time, I remembered my friend.

Every winter, the skin on my arms dries out, turns red, then gray, and become painfully irritated. My ex-wife would always tell me to moisturize my skin with lotion, but of course, I was too much of a man for that. She would try to convince me by mentioning that sailors use lotion. Now, if you've ever spent any time in the army, you probably don't consider sailors to be the epitome of manliness, so this wasn't a very effective argument. Fast forward to 2006: I moved to Jordan in the winter and went through a tank of diesel (250 JD worth) in under a month. I was terrified of the thought of running out of money that quickly and had no electric water heater, so I decided I'd live with no heat or hot water. Hey, I was tough and complaining was for wusses. My arms turned red, then gray, became extremely irritated, and then eventually, the skin cracked. Whenever I'd shake someone's hands or open a taxi door, my hands would crack and blood would come out. But I was tough and complaining was for wimps. Eventually, the blood became an issue: praying with blood on your clothing is problematic. I couldn't avoid bleeding on my clothes unless I was going to start wearing gloves while getting dressed. This is where the commitment to machismo just had to stop in light of practicality. I started using lotion, and of course, one of my co-workers told me doing so was effeminate. I had it coming. It's called Justice.

Later, I actually learned that anointing one's skin from time to time is sunna, and delaying this until a need arises is makruh (disliked).

Skin Tone Ring Stone

I had been searching for a ring for some time. Not only is it sunna in the Shafi'i school for a man to wear a ring with a stone in it on his pinky (though there is a difference of opinion regarding which hand is superior), it's also very kewl. One day during fiqh class, my friend and neighbour, Abu Poule (NOT HIS REAL KUNYA) waved his hand while asking a question and there it was: the ring of my desire! Was it immoral for me to covet my neighbour's ring? A few days later, I asked him where he got it from and he said he had a bunch at home. (Abu Poule used to have an online store of Islamic paraphernalia, and these were his leftover wares.) Nothing beats being a walking advertisement for your stuff.

In natural lighting, the stone doesn't look as red as it does in the photo. It's actually a reddish brown, similar to my skin tone.

No Proof Required

Yahoo ran a story about the latest way to get even with people: accuse them of being members of Al-Qaeda. While the extent of the damage to this poor guy was a bit of humiliation and several hours in a jail cell, imagine what would have happened if he had flown into Egypt or Syria and had no Western European or North American citizenship to save his skin: he would have likely been tortured into giving confessions and then convicted based on the same.

During this same week, the BBC broke a story about Curveball, an Iraqi defector, liar, and alcoholic whose testimony was central to the arguments Colin Powell presented to the UN for invading Iraq. Without a doubt, the US would have invaded Iraq regardless of the reason. The point here is that Powell put his own credibility and that of his country at stake with little to go on.

This all reminds me of university: I found that when I was asked to write an essay, if I stuck to the positions presented by the professor during class, I got higher grades than when I presented my own views. Regardless of how much I defended my own views or how blindly I regurgitated the professor's views, the results were the same: Say as I say, get an A. It worked, and I'm a pragmatist, so I used it to my advantage.

Pascal's Wager a la the Church of Environmentalism

Environmentalism as religion is certainly not a novel idea. Environmental proselytizing has been mainstream for quite some time. However, what caught me by surprise is a video that a friend sent me last month:


This is Pascal's Wager proper. His, "silver bullet" argument suffers from the same flaws inherent in the original wager.

God, Democracy, Iraq, Burma & War

We all know the secular mantra: more people have been killed in the name of God than for any other purpose, so we should make sure religion has no role in politics. The reality is that political leaders want to convince their masses that they are doing A Good Thing™ and will use whatever works. European warlords prior to the first world war started using evolution as an excuse as Darwin's theory gained in popularity. White supremacists also now use an evolutionary argument. (These same people used to use some sort of a Biblical argument to justify their racism.) Be it the emancipation of burqa-clad Afghani women, eliminating weapons of mass destruction, toppling a dictatorial regime, or spreading democracy, the idea is to win over the hearts of the masses so that they can feel good about their sons and daughters having their blood spilled under the auspicious leadership of the current Fuhrer.

The real reason for most wars is that it fits the strategic interests of the country waging war. If those interests appear greedy or unworthy to die for, better reasons are invented. In the past, these reasons often had to do with God. Now, other, more secular reasons are used. But rest assured that if there is no strategic interest in a particular region, then all the noble reasons in the world won't make a difference. Burma? What made them think they deserve democracy? They don't present a threat to Western interests, can't keep China in check, and besides, they're not white. The same goes for much of sub-Saharan Africa: it will continue to be ignored until there is a strategic interest in invading it. Until then, they can continue to be raped, killed, and starved for all we care.



A Common Error

While my posts on the pronunciation of Arabic letters have always taken the perspective of descriptive linguistics, I am, for a moment, going to take a step back, focus on Classical Arabic, and take a prescriptive approach.

There is no such word as 3a'ilah (عائلة) meaning, "family". I can hear your protests already, and I offer you this challenge: find the word for me in any classical Arabic dictionary. You won't. Period. Yes, there are related words, like 3iyal (dependents), and 3a'il (عائل) meaning, "a poor man." This latter word is used in Surat Al-Duha, ayah 8: (و وجدك عائلا فأغنى) "And He found you poor and gave you wealth." The feminine form of 3a'il is certainly 3a'ilah, so there is nothing objectional to using this word when meaning, "a poor woman." However, to use it to mean, "family" is wrong.

So where did this usage come from?

The word is, in fact, 3aqilah (عاقلة), but the pronunciation of qaf as a glottal stop in the cities of the Levant and Egypt dominated until that simply became the accepted pronunciation, even among people who do not pronounce the qaf in this way. Furthermore, the original meaning of 3aqilah is not your generic, "family". Rather, they are your father's descendants, his father's descendants, etc.; i.e. they are your patrilineal relatives who are responsible for paying indemnity (Ar. diya) on your behalf in the case that you accidentally kill someone. This word is derived from another word for indemnity in Arabic: 3aql (i.e. tying), so named because it was paid in camels which were tied up. As for the word 3aql meaning, "mind", it is related to, "tying" in the sense of bringing order to one's affairs and keeping them under control.

Uranium In Jordan's Groundwater


Jordan's groundwater contains uranium, primarily because of the large uranium deposits in the region.

Last spring I went camping near Wadi Mujib with a bunch of Qasid boys. Not only did I drink copious amounts of groundwater, I also soaked in the stuff for a couple hours. If you've ever wondered why I have such a glow, the secret's out. I hate to brag, but some people find me to be a bit noor-otic.

In preparation for the trip, I bought a two-person tent from Carrefour. It turns out to actually be a 1/2 person tent: I had to sleep with my legs bent, which meant that my twisted knee was worse in the morning and I wasn't able to climb the next day. To make the situation more interesting, the number of campers exceeded the tent space available, so I ended up sharing my 1/2 person tent with another brother.

In the image of the tent, you'll see a pair of genuine Canadian combat boots next to it so you can get an idea of its actual size. I bought the boots used from Army Street in Zarqa. All the new stuff was plastic junk glued together. When a vendor showed me the new plastic boots I told him, "These aren't real army boots" to which he replied indignantly, "How would you know?" I guess he figured that guys who wear dresses have never served in the army. He was obviously unaware of the latest trends in macho dresses.

On the plus side, Jordan might make use of its uranium by producing a nuclear reactor, which would mean cheap electricity. On the down side, there's no safe way to dispose of the waste, and people might start accusing Jordan of trying to produce nuclear weapons. After all, only peaceful countries like the US and Israel should ever have nukes.

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Picking a Bone Where It Shouldn't Exist

While living in Tampa, a Salafi brother was doing his routine of criticizing traditional Islamic scholarship, talking about the silly mistakes that (in his mind) these so-called-scholars have made in the past. One of the examples he mentioned was that, when listing who is worthiest to lead the group prayer, scholars mention, "the one with the best penis" (ahsanuhum dhakaran). He then proceeded to make an obscene gesture mimicking this. I found this statement disturbing. I knew he wouldn't go so far as lying and wondered how such a statement could be present in books of traditional scholarship. Is it possible that some traditional scholars were just a bit off?

About a year later, I was reading through a fiqh text on the issue of who should lead the group prayer. When preferring one candidate over another, the text mentioned that ahsanuhum dhikran (Tr. "the one with the best mention"; i.e. the best reputation) should be chosen. It immediately became clear what had happened: in Arabic, vowels are not normally written, so this armchair critic of traditional scholars had misread the word dhikr (mention) as dhakar (penis). As Imam Ghazali said, "Every vessel pours forth that which it contains." Had this person been less concerned with his personal lust for proving himself right, then perhaps his understanding would have been directed to that which makes more sense in the given context.

As a digression, Letter Sort Order in Arabic Dictionaries notes that Arabic words with similar letters often have related meanings. A fortiori, words that have the exact same letters (like dhakar and dhikr) usually have meanings that return to a common meaning. Most abstract words in Arabic have their origins in a very concrete word related to the nomadic lifestyle of the ancient Arabs. Concrete words were then re-purposed to have abstract meanings by extension and analogy. The word dhikr (meaning, "mention" or, "remembrance") has its roots in the word dhakar (penis) because the latter is the means by which a man is remembered after his death; i.e. through his offspring.

Friday, November 02, 2007

Qaf: More Pronunciations & A Bit of Fiqh

A reader commented that qaf is also sometimes pronounced jaf in the Gulf. In my original post, I mentioned that the only person I had ever heard use this was my mother-in-law, whose authentic Bani Hassan dialect will probably become extinct during my lifetime. More interestingly, the reader commented that the qaf is also sometimes pronounced as yaf in the Gulf. As noted in The Avatars of Jeem, Gulf Arabs often pronounce jeem as yeem, so pronouncing qaf as yaf after already pronouncing it jaf seems like a reasonable extension.

The original article also neglected to mention that many people from Sudan pronounce qaf as ghaf. For example, they will refer to the second call of prayer as the ighama (where gh is the sound found in, "Baghdad").

In the Shafi'i school, pronouncing every letter of the fatiha is required. If a person mispronounces any letter of the fatiha while being able to pronounce it properly (i.e. according to the pronunciation mandated by Qur'anic Arabic), their prayer is invalid. Ibn Hajar holds that this applies to all letters including the Qur'anic qaf. Ramli, on the other hand, makes an exception to what the fuqaha call qaf al-3arab, or gaf: according to him, pronouncing the qaf in the fatiha this way would not invalidate the prayer, though it would be disliked (makruh). Based on this, Habib Ali once said that it would be better for the Sudanese to recite the qaf as gaf in prayer rather than attempting to recite it properly only for it to come out as ghaf. The reason is because the verse اهدنا الصراط المستقيم (Tr. "Clarify for us the straight path"), when pronounced with gaf, does not change in meaning. However, when pronounced with ghaf, the meaning is altered incredibly: instead of the requested path being the straight one, it becomes the gloomy (mustagheem) one.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Real Cake Found in Jordan!

Today I tried Alwadees and was pleased with the results. What they lack in variety they make up for in quality. They use genuine Juhayna-brand dairy cream imported from Egypt. I bought a croquant and cream cake from them and it was very good.

They are located in Shmeisani close to Masjid Al-Fayha. Their phone number is 566-0664.

As for the meaning of wadees, Lisan Al-Arab mentions two meanings: low-growing herbage that covers the ground and thin, light honey. The second meaning is probably what was intended when naming the store.