Comment Complications

I set up Blogger to have comments moderated and delivered to me by email. Unfortunately, it looks like not all comments are delivered by email. (Yes, I checked my spam folder.) Today, I noticed that three comments are waiting in Blogger's web administration interface. I will address them shortly, insha' Allah.

Kenyan-Canadian Coffee Cajolery

Yesterday, I went to buy coffee for the company. To my surprise, the shop close to the office carries Kenyan coffee. I ordered 500 grams with two thirds golden and one third dark and had it ground. By the time I reached the office I realized I had made a big mistake: this was supposed to be for American drip coffee but it was ground too fine, as if for Turkish coffee. Of course, it didn't work in the drip coffee machine. The murasil at work made me Turkish coffee out of it but I don't really like Turkish coffee, so I can't comment fairly.

Later yesterday while I was in a lesson, I received a missed call and then a text message from a fellow Vancouverite expat (who happens to be a good guy other than the fact that he likes Caffe Artigiano, but alas, no one is perfect) telling me that he bought me a quarter kilogram of the preferred bean of Egyptian-Canadian coffee connoisseurs: Kenyan AA. I picked it up today and gave the Ministry of the Interior very clear instructions: grind coarsely (by Arab standards), increase the amount of coffee, and let it cook longer. She did so and the results were absolutely to die for: the first shot was bold and full of subtly complex yet fruity notes. By the third shot, the much-desired acidity had set in.

Apparently, my Kenyan-Canadian friend found the shop that sells these wonderful beans next to Gerard's ice cream shop in the Abdoun Circle; I believe it's called Baraka Coffee or something similar. He paid a premium too: 4 JD for a quarter kilogram; in contrast, nibari goes for 1.70 JD per 250 grams.

Muslim Obama Supporters: Please Have Your Heads Checked

It is beyond me how some American Muslims are touting Obama as the greatest thing since, um, I'm not really sure since what, but since something great anyways.

Let's check the facts:

1. Obama has openly and unequivocally pledged support for Israel. Do you think he was joking?
2. Obama has made every attempt to distance himself from his father's (arguably former) Islamic roots. People like this usually feel the need to make a point; in order to show his loyalty to America and Christianity, he's likely going to be more anti-Muslim than he needs to be to keep the favour of the huge pro-Israeli lobby on Capitol Hill. This phenomenon is actually quite common among African-American officers in the US Army: they often give other African-Americans a hard time to show them they're not going to take it easy on them just because they're the same race.
   
3. The guy is a democrat. As if immoral foreign policy wasn't enough, here comes a wave of domestic moral relativism. Expect more abortions and gay rights.

I'm not suggesting for one minute that McCain is a better candidate. I really don't think it makes a difference at this point: for so many foreign policy decisions, the point of no return is a faded memory. There is no turning back on Iraq and Afghanistan, and support for Israel is a part of the catechism of every realistic presidential candidate.

As a reminder, Muslims and Arabs voted as a bloc for Bush in 2000. The vote was so close that Muslim and Arab support was clearly a factor in Bush's success. The issue at hand was that Muslims and Arabs were mortified that Liebermann, a devout Jew and Israeli citizen, might become Vice President of the United States of America. "We voted as a bloc! We helped Bush succeed!", people were announcing in the mosques. Allah taught us a lesson: whoever seeks dignity through anything other than Allah is humiliated.

Sorry, I don't have a workable solution today, just some grumpy ruminations. Whether you vote or not, it doesn't make a difference: expect more invasions of Muslim countries and undying support for Israel.

Building a Rocket Stove

Learn how to build your own rocket stove by watching this video.

Returning to American Fundamentals

OK, so some days I'm grumpy. Today I'm not.

The fundamental principles of the founding of America are very enlightened. Any society where people can be brought in as slaves and then fight civilly for equal rights and win has some fundamental good in it. It just so happens that shortsighted jingoistic idiots have ruined America's name internationally, brought its economy to the brink of bankruptcy, and replaced its moral values with a directionless state of moral relativism. (Did I mention that I'm not grumpy today?)

Over the past few weeks, glimpses of that fundamental good have resurfaced. First, there was the Boumediene vs. Bush decision, that said that the Military Commissions Act was an unconstitutional suspension of habeas corpus rights. Today, in the District of Columbia vs. Heller, the Supreme Court banished the 32 year old prohibition of owning handguns in the nation's rotten core. The District of Columbia's handgun laws were as bad as Canada's laws. I am hopeful that there will be a drop in crime now that law-abiding citizens can own handguns, insha' Allah.

Off with Their S's!

After trying to explain a bit of the evolution of French spelling to some co-workers yesterday and having them only grudgingly believe me, I tried looking up the matter without coming up with anything concrete. While this article on the circumflex does mention that the circumflex indicates a dropped s in French, it doesn't actually spell out the history of it.

The French revolutionaries decided to drop the silent s that followed a vowel and preceded a consonant; it was the spelling of the Marquis and simply had to go, along with their heads. (Revolutionaries often change language, the names of months, etc.) In order to show that they weren't simply ignorant (for the pedantry runs deep in French blood), they annotated the preceding vowel with a circumflex: côte, fenêtre, hôpital, râpé are all examples of this. École is another example of a word with a dropped s (being derived from the Latin schola, from which we get the English school), but for some reason an acute accent was used in place of the circumflex in this example.

Who Wears the Pants?

It's old news by now that Yves Saint-Laurent kicked the bucket. (Or should I rather say that he kicked the pail blue?) However, I think it's worth reflecting upon the fact that a homosexual is crediting with popularizing women's trousers. It only takes a moment's reflection to realize that trousers were originally men's wear, and that it would make sense for a homosexual to want to, "improve" women by making them dress more like men. What doesn't make sense is for women to welcome this change. Practically, it is likely that women will remain subjugated to the tastes of men for the foreseeable future. After all, it makes complete biological sense for a woman to attract the attention of a mate. (I am intentionally avoiding a discussion of men being subjugated to women's taste in order not to digress.) However, at the very least, straight men should reject fashions that have been dictated by those who don't even find women attractive. Were they to do this, women would also reject them, out of necessity. (Not many women would consciously dress in a manner that made them unattractive to men.) Of course, it's not just men's clothing that has been dictated to women: the unattainable boyish figure that keeps women slaving away at diets is dictated by an industry dominated by men who find boys more attractive than voluptuous women. How strange is it, then, that some people insist that the Islamic dress code for women has been imposed upon them by misogynistic men?

Comments Now Being Moderated

Due to the recent use of profanity in a comment on, Coffee Grumblings, I have decided to moderate comments to keep them clean. I'm a big believer in keeping discussions open, so I'm not about to curb even the harshest criticism, but I do want to keep things clean, insha' Allah.

Coffee Grumblings

Let's establish a basic fact: Starbucks sucks. In fact, most coffee in the US and Canada is awful. I've found that the majority of coffee on that continent is either watery or burnt and bitter. I can put up with the watery stuff (such as like what finds at Tim Hortons and 7-Eleven) but I just can't understand people actually paying for and enjoying what they get from Starbucks or Caffe Artigiano; their coffee is so bad, bitter, and burnt that one wonders if they cleaned out an ashtray and heated it as a low-cost alternative beverage while charging a whopping premium for it. (Some days, I think that you can sell whatever garbage you want if you just market it properly, and yes, some days I'm grumpy.) I tried dumping out half my mug of Artigiano toxin and replacing it with milk and the beverage was still awful. While living in North America, I coined the phrase, al-qahwatu qit3atun min al-3adhab: coffee is a portion of punishment. Seattle's Best I can actually stomach, though not enjoyably. The only commercial coffee in North America that I actually enjoyed a great deal was Van Houtte. Their coffee is so good that I actually enjoyed their Columbian blend and French roast; with other brands, I normally hate them because they're so bitter. However, the real crown prize goes to Van Houtte's Kenyan blend. The high acidity and subtlety of flavours is to die for. It is no surprise that only 10% of arabica beans meet Van Houtte's standards. There's a saying that when pizza is good, it's really good, and when it's not good, it's still pretty good. This doesn't hold for coffee: there's plenty of repulsive coffee that's not worth drinking.

While I like the plain, unsweetened Bedouin coffee that my in-laws serve, I'm still striving for the perfect cup of sweetened coffee here in Amman. I tried finding Kenyan coffee but it doesn't seem to be readily available. I explained to one coffee seller that I wanted higher acidity. He suggested that I try a nibari blend of two-thirds light roast and one-third dark. (Note: the Arabs do not burn their coffee into oblivion, so what's considered a dark roast in the Arab world is probably medium in other places.) The result was fairly impressive. It was definitely tasty and worth drinking, though it can't match a good cup of Kenyan brew. Now all that remains is for me to find out what Nibar translates to in English: it's an Indian city, but which one? It could be Nurpur, Nagpur, Nandurbar, or a host of other cities that begin with n and end in -pur or -bar.

Granular Ruminations III: Processed Corn Stinks

There is something particularly unpleasant about the smell of microwavable popcorn and corn chips; they really smell like dirty socks and diapers, respectively. I've had to put up with this smell for several years while working in the United States and Canada. Recently, I found that I was not alone in my disdain for the smell of microwaved popcorn: someone at work nuked grits with the office door open, causing our neighbours across the hall to complain that they were close to suffocating. (Of course, I don't find the smell of cigarette smoke that their employees inundate us with any better.) To add insult to injury, one day my beloved co-workers prepared microwavable popcorn with cheese flavouring. Later that day, I received the following email:

As-salaamu alaykum Mr. Abu Fluffy:

I just entered the other office right now, your office, and you are right the smell of the office stinks just like old socks. So on behalf of me and Hiraganasan, we would like to apologise for the smell.

Ps. The popcorn isn’t ours even! But we volunteered to make it :(

Alhamdulillah, they've stopped making microwaved popcorn since that day, at least when I'm around.

Granular Ruminations II: Islamic Law and the Food Crisis

Introduction

Anyone who has been reading or listening to the news over the past months has taken notice of the food crisis. Prices have risen at an alarming rate and yet there is no actual world-wide food shortage. The problem is not with the amount of food available, but rather, with its management. Not surprisingly, there are Islamic laws and guidelines that, if followed, would alleviate, if not eliminate, much of the problem. After discussing the content of this article with a friend, he laughed it off, indicating that the non-Muslim subjects of Islamic lands -- let alone non-Muslims in their own countries -- were not bound by many of the prescripts of Islamic Law. While this is true, disobeying Allah has dire consequences even when not legally punishable in this world. Scholars are unanimous that non-Muslims are not required to pray or give zakah, yet we find them regretting this in the Hereafter, as Allah mentions in the context of believers questioning the denizens of Hell:

قالوا ما سلككم في سقر قالوا لم نك من المصلين و لم نك نطعم المسكين

They will say, "What brought you into Hell?" They will say, "We were not among those who prayed nor did we used to feed the poor."
(Qur'an, 74.42-44)

Furthermore, the strongest position within Islamic scholarship is that those who have never heard the message of Islam will not be punished in the Hereafter, yet it is obvious that alcoholism and other vices are destructive even if one is not morally responsible for avoiding them. Thus, the point of this article is not to present solutions that can be applied over a short timespan, but rather, to provide material for people to reflect upon regarding the wisdom of Islamic Law. Allah Most High says:

ظهر الفساد في البر والبحر بما كسبت أيدي الناس ليذيقهم بعض الذي عملوا لعلهم يرجعون

Corruption has appeared in the land and the sea on account of what the hands of men have wrought, that He may make them taste a part of that which they have done, so that they may return.
(Qur'an, 30.41)

In explaining a number of verses, classical texts of Qur'anic exegesis leave no doubt that ignoring the commandments of Allah often results in hunger and natural disasters. The focal point, as mentioned in the above verse, is that people reflect upon what is happening to them and thereby return to Allah in obedience.

Problems and Solutions

Ignoring the obvious, like the prohibition of crop destruction and stockpiling to keep prices high, there are a number of other Islamic regulations regarding food:

1. The prohibition of waste. A recent article in the Star indicates that 210 million kilograms of food is thrown out in Toronto each year, most of it edible, and much of it in its original packaging. It doesn't take an economics major to realise that the less we waste, the less we buy, thereby decreasing the demand for food, and ultimately dropping its price on the market.
   After graduating from high school in 1990, I spent my summer vacation in Egypt. It pained me to see bread shamelessly thrown into the garbage. In Egypt, the word for bread is `aysh, meaning, "life." It is as if this waste foreshadowed the tossing of Egyptian life into the rubbish mounds: eighteen years later, Egyptians would die in bread riots. Further back in the early seventies, my parents had immigrated to Canada and my father worked on a ship with a number of Italian-Canadians. Upon finishing his lunch, a young man proceeded to drop-kick the unwanted remainder of his sandwich over the side of the ship. An older Italian man saw this and punched him so hard that he spun around a couple times under the force of the blow. "During the war, your mother would have slept with someone for that piece of bread", he told him. If life is sacred, then anything that attenuates life-support must necessarily be profane.
2. Islamic Law mandates that a certain portion of crops be given to the poor. Zakah is not charity: it is the property of the poor and farmers are obliged to discharge it. Under an Islamic state, the ruler takes the zakah by force from those who owe it and distributes it among worthy recipients. The Hanafi school is the strictest in this regard, declaring zakah due on all crops. The more lenient position of the Shafi'i and Maliki schools is that zakah is only due on staple crops (i.e. those that can be stored long-term and provide primary nutrition) such as grains, legumes, dried dates, and raisins. (A Shafi'i scholar in the United Kingdom told me that the zakah of Eid Al-Fitr, which must be paid in the staple of the land according to the Shafi'i school, could be paid in potatoes in a place like Ireland. This would seem to indicate that it is considered a staple crop and zakah of crops would be due upon it as well.) Taking the lenient Shafi'i position, zakah is only due on crops if the yield is greater than 715 kg of grain. Ten percent of eligible crop is due if it is watered naturally and five percent if grown on irrigated land. In 2006, the world produced over 695 million metric tons of maize, 634 million metric tons of rice, and 605 million metric tons of wheat. Assuming that 95% of farmers produce more than the miniscule 715 kg of grain per crop and that they all irrigate their land (thereby qualifying for the lower zakah percentage) means that 33 million metric tons of maize, 30 million metric tons of rice, and 28.7 million metric tons of wheat are already the property of the poor. Again, this is not charity: this is their property according to Islamic Law.
3. Alcoholic beverages are almost entirely based on staple crops, including grains, grapes, and potatoes. A colossal amount of food is being wasted in the production of products that are interdicted by Islamic Law. Were these foodstuffs to be used in feeding people, they would flood the market and the price of food would drop dramatically. This idea is not as revolutionary or Islamicentric as it might seem: Open Fight to Keep Grain from Liquor was published in the New York Times in 1917 and was unrelated to any temperance movement.
   

Postscript

The above points are a mere sampling of some of the more obvious ways in which Islamic Law can alleviate the food crisis. There are certainly other laws that regulate foodstuffs that I did not mention above because I'm not sure how (or if) they affect the cost of food. There is also the more general worldwide price increase of everything that is tied to the increased price of petroleum, which in turn is due to a lack of peace and political stability in Muslim heartlands, but that is beyond the scope of this article.