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alexsmitposts · 5 years

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I Never Saw a World So Fragmented! It is amazing how easily, without resistance, the Western empire is managing to destroy “rebellious” countries that are standing in its way. I work in all corners of the planet, wherever Kafkaesque “conflicts” get ignited by Washington, London or Paris. What I see and describe are not only those horrors which are taking place all around me; horrors that are ruining human lives, destroying villages, cities and entire countries. What I try to grasp is that on the television screens and on the pages of newspapers and the internet, the monstrous crimes against humanity somehow get covered (described), but the information becomes twisted and manipulated to such an extent, that readers and viewers in all parts of the world end up knowing close to nothing about their own suffering, and/or of the suffering of the other. For instance, in 2015 and in 2019, I tried to sit down and reason with the Hong Kong rioters. It was a truly revealing experience! They knew nothing, absolutely zero about the crimes the West has been committing in places such as Afghanistan, Syria or Libya. When I tried to explain to them, how many Latin American democracies Washington had overthrown, they thought I was a lunatic. How could the good, tender, ‘democratic’ West murder millions, and bathe entire continents in blood? That is not what they were taught at their universities. That is not what the BBC, CNN or even the China Morning Post said and wrote. Look, I am serious. I showed them photos from Afghanistan and Syria; photos stored in my phone. They must have understood that this was original, first hand stuff. Still, they looked, but their brains were not capable of processing what they were being shown. Images and words; these people were conditioned not to comprehend certain types of information. But this is not only happening in Hong Kong, a former British colony. You will maybe find it hard to believe, but even in a Communist country like Vietnam; a proud country, a country which suffered enormously from both French colonialism and the U.S. mad and brutal imperialism, people that I associated with (and I lived in Hanoi for 2 years) knew close to nothing about the horrendous crimes committed against the poor and defenseless neighboring Laos, by the U.S. and its allies during the so-called “Secret War”; crimes that included the bombing of peasants and water buffalos, day and night, by strategic B-52 bombers. And in Laos, where I covered de-mining efforts, people knew nothing about the same monstrosities that the West had committed in Cambodia; murdering hundreds of thousands of people by carpet bombing, displacing millions of peasants from their homes, triggering famine and opening the doors to the Khmer Rouge takeover. When I am talking about this shocking lack of knowledge in Vietnam, regarding the region and what it was forced to go through, I am not speaking just about the shop-keepers or garment workers. It applies to Vietnamese intellectuals, artists, teachers. It is total amnesia, and it came with the so-called ‘opening up’ to the world, meaning with the consumption of Western mass media and later by the infiltration of social media. At least Vietnam shares borders as well as a turbulent history with both Laos and Cambodia. But imagine two huge countries with only maritime borders, like the Philippines and Indonesia. Some Manila dwellers I met thought that Indonesia was in Europe. Now guess, how many Indonesians know about the massacres that the United States committed in the Philippines a century ago, or how the people in the Philippines were indoctrinated by Western propaganda about the entire South East Asia? Or, how many Filipinos know about the U.S.-triggered 1965 military coup, which deposed the internationalist President Sukarno, killing between 2-3 million intellectuals, teachers, Communists and unionists in “neighboring” Indonesia? Look at the foreign sections of the Indonesian or Filipino newspapers, and what will you see; the same news from Reuters, AP, AFP. In fact, you will also see the same reports in the news outlets of Kenya, India, Uganda, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Guatemala, and the list goes on and on. It is designed to produce one and only one result: absolute fragmentation! *** The fragmentation of the world is amazing, and it is increasing with time. Those who hoped that the internet would improve the situation, grossly miscalculated. With a lack of knowledge, solidarity has disappeared, too. Right now, all over the world, there are riots and revolutions. I am covering the most significant ones; in the Middle East, in Latin America, and in Hong Kong. Let me be frank: there is absolutely no understanding in Lebanon about what is going on in Hong Kong, or in Bolivia, Chile and Colombia. Western propaganda throws everything into one sack. In Hong Kong, rioters indoctrinated by the West are portrayed as “pro-democracy protesters”. They kill, burn, beat up people, but they are still the West’s favorites. Because they are antagonizing the People’s Republic of China, now the greatest enemy of Washington. And because they were created and sustained by the West. In Bolivia, the anti-imperialist President was overthrown in a Washington orchestrated coup, but the mostly indigenous people who are demanding his return are portrayed as rioters. In Lebanon, as well as Iraq, protesters are treated kindly by both Europe and the United States, mainly because the West hopes that pro-Iranian Hezbollah and other Shi’a groups and parties could be weakened by the protests. The clearly anti-capitalist and anti-neo-liberal revolution in Chile, as well as the legitimate protests in Colombia, are reported as some sort of combination of explosion of genuine grievances, and hooliganism and looting. Mike Pompeo recently warned that the United States will support right-wing South American governments, in their attempt to maintain order. All this coverage is nonsense. In fact, it has one and only one goal: to confuse viewers and readers. To make sure that they know nothing or very little. And that, at the end of the day, they collapse on their couches with deep sighs: “Oh, the world is in turmoil!” *** It also leads to the tremendous fragmentation of countries on each continent, and of the entire global south. Asian countries know very little about each other. The same goes for Africa and the Middle East. In Latin America, it is Russia, China and Iran who are literally saving the life of Venezuela. Fellow Latin American nations, with the one shiny exception of Cuba, do zero to help. All Latin American revolutions are fragmented. All U.S. produced coups basically go unopposed. The same situation is occurring all over the Middle East and Asia. There are no internationalist brigades defending countries destroyed by the West. The big predator comes and attacks its prey. It is a horrible sight, as a country dies in front of the world, in terrible agony. No one interferes. Everybody just watches. One after another, countries are falling. This is not how states in the 21st Century should behave. This is the law of attraction the jungle. When I used to live in Africa, making documentary films in Kenya, Rwanda, Congo, driving through the wilderness; this is how animals were behaving, not people. Big cats finding their victim. A zebra, or a gazelle. And the hunt would begin: a terrible occurrence. Then the slow killing; eating the victim alive. Quite similar to the so-called Monroe doctrine. The Empire has to kill. Periodically. With predictable regularity. And no one does anything. The world is watching. Pretending that nothing extraordinary is taking place. One wonders: can legitimate revolution succeed under such conditions? Can any democratically elected socialist government survive? Or does everything decent, hopeful, and optimistic always ends up as the prey to a degenerate, brutal and vulgar empire? If that is the case, what’s the point of playing by the rules? Obviously, the rules are rotten. They exist only in order to uphold the status quo. They protect the colonizers, and castigate the rebellions victims. But that’s not what I wanted to discuss here, today. My point is: the victims are divided. They know very little about each other. The struggles for true freedom, are fragmented. Those who fight, and bleed, but fight nevertheless, are often antagonized by their less daring fellow victims. I have never seen the world so divided. Is the Empire succeeding, after all? Yes and no. Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela – they have already woken up. They stood up. They are learning about each other, from each other. Without solidarity, there can be no victory. Without knowledge, there can be no solidarity. Intellectual courage is now clearly coming from Asia, from the “East”. In order to change the world, Western mass media has to be marginalized, confronted. All Western concepts, including “democracy”, “peace”, and “human rights” have to be questioned, and redefined. And definitely, knowledge. We need a new world, not an improved one. The world does not need London, New York and Paris to teach it about itself. Fragmentation has to end. Nations have to learn about each other, directly. If they do, true revolutions would soon succeed, while subversions and fake color revolutions like those in Hong Kong, Bolivia and all over the Middle East, will be regionally confronted, and prevented from ruining millions of human lives.

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raysondetre · 7 years

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Yep -and that's why I didn't go to Radiohead’s concert this year. And Thom can rag on artists who didn't approve or public opprobrium on twitter all he wants (which my impression of was it was negligible, certainly I only tweeted twice on the matter), -all he's showing that is he might be stuck in the identikit straightjacket enough he's incapable of suffering a disagreement over a major issue. The last time I had to suffer thru that was when Billy Corgan was a Global Warming denier -and he couldn't suffer a debate or disagreement, and I threw him one. I'm not sure I give a flying flip if Thom proves himself intolerant on a left side issue he doesn't agree with, where the faux pas might prove just as bad in terms of prospects for the end of the world. (Israel incentivizing the collapse of the ME for its own benefit in collusion with Saudi Arabia/Turkey is the best recipe for WWIII the planet has ever witnessed.) He can complain, but he certainly doesn't get to deny me my personal right to exercise my consumer choice to not attend the concert of an artist who chooses to play in Israel in its current climate, which is like a violent black hole sucking up the Middle East, thanks purely to its utter political impunity globally. They don't feel a pinch anywhere. BDS is literally the only form of social sanction left, and he tells us to stuff it because he doesn't like to get lectured? What a ponce. He feels embedded because Jonny is married to an Israeli Jew of Arab extraction? Good for him. You could have left it at that. Saying that through her they know Palestinians is about as meaningless as saying she has black friends. (As if knowing Palestinians who live on the Israeli side who are discriminated against but not under Occupation somehow changes or justifies anything that’s happening.) Anyone embedded at this point has to balance things out by actively engaging in the Occupied Territories, -figure out a way to balance things out somehow. I bet he/she's never lived in the Occupied Territories, and as far as I'm concerned that's still having utterly no clue. I did. I lived on both sides, and until I’d lived in the West Bank, even though it was in eyeshot, I had no clue. I'm informed, and Radiohead's decision was a heartbreaker. That is all. Roger goes there.

Thom has a disturbing proximity to Louise Mensch thanks to her hubby being Flea's manager (-he manages RHCP -the connection is Thom’s and Flea’s longstanding band collaboration as Atoms for Peace). They're already on mental crack and off the map in neo-McCarthyland if absorbing this (which seems likely given their proximity to a ground zero source). Parading his superior intellect is laughable while he's apparently already falling for the neoliberal f***tard #resistance (if you dare to use retard, Thom, I’ll go one better) -along with all of his elite/professional class liberals. (It was a tweet. He fell for it initially and I’ve paid no attention since, but a cursory examination shows he’s on board.) When your entire class has just demonstrably proven that you'd sooner invert McCarthyism rather than come to terms with the failures of the prevailing orthodoxy, or you're incapable of recognizing this machination for what it is, well, that’s not too keen of an intellect at this point. Neoliberalism is just the 'smooth' version of denialism bent on giving us the kinder face of fascism along with a dead planet. -So Radiohead don't live in the US where they could get pwned by the Russian tool trope just for exhibiting rational thought, eh? It doesn't threaten them. Just like they've in no way suffered a threat from the Occupation and never will. Suffice to say they’ll in no way be threatened as participants in BDS, when legislation has been attempted in places as far flung as Canada to stamp out a boycott campaign by criminalizing campaigners (our present neoliberal Prime Minister supports this in spirit if not in legislation). Jonny Greenwood’s wife has her Israeli citizenship and Jewish national privilege as a Jewish emigre from an Arab country ( actually it was her parent or her grandparent who immigrated on this basis). Her family is one of foreigners automatically granted Israeli citizenship because they were Jewish while Palestinians are forcibly removed from their own land elsewhere in Israel and the Occupied Territories to accommodate this foreign influx, purely by virtue of the fact that they are not Jewish. If this is through her grandmother (Jewish lineage is determined matrilineally) -then the grandmother was part of the diaspora following the Nabka and this woman’s family would have been among the Palestinians never permitted to return, -if not for her Jewish heritage. -Pretty much sums it up. Jonny Greenwood’s wife’s very citizenship is the fulcrum of this religion as exclusionary privilege dependent on birth exercised under the pretension of behaving like a functioning democracy. She is literally the one benefitting at the Palestinian’s collective expense. If she can make her peace with that reality by having Palestinian friends, good for her. But it in no way ameliorates the situation itself. This may grant her the self-regard of being both Arab and Jewish, but that integration only works in one direction. I met Palestinians claiming heritage to the place as long running as she claims for her father in Iraq; they have no rights on their own land. The displacement surrounding them is a constant unremitting social holocaust, and that’s if that family even exists anymore. They claimed to have been Jews who converted at the time of Christ. The claim of her heritage as Jewish pre-empts his claim to the right to live in Bethlehem, though it may be just as long. His family’s claim only exists under an exercise of prolonged gradual erasure and constant annihilation exacted by the State of Israel, -for not being Jewish. PS: The division inflicted by the right is nothing compared to those on the Left, as they were designed to shatter the left. The right generates fracture, the left’s fractures are internal. The right is fine, the left is shattered. And a mass sell out of our greatest artists (considering what they could be) was no flaming help at all. What a flame out to watch.

Disillusionment all 'round, Thom. Actually it flaming hurts. And Thom here, if he really believes in not causing division, could make an effort rather than dolloping out than this trolloping piece of condescension, especially since he’s already apparently falling for the latest division sent to destroy the real left (the Russians did it, not the flaming neoliberal subversion of the left that made this whole election an exercise of differentiation between levels of sadism one must expect, replicated from one western nation to the next). The Russian ploy exists to buttress the failure of neoliberal hegemony (hence, denial), whose only raison d’être in the first place was to destroy the left by creation of a facsimile with a gloss over of identity politics. Maybe Thom Yorke could take a hot tip from Noam on that one instead of falling for this little number. He certainly missed Noam’s hot tip that neoliberalism is by definition fascist. PPS: As for Mr. Godrich: when my kid doesn’t do any homework and his classes are in jeopardy, I withdraw his PS3. On a national scale, the cultural boycott is no different. I think people who are already in disagreement within that country can understand the need for a little withdrawal of privilege from the majority of the culture who have no problem denying the Palestinians everything to the point of extirpation and Cabinet posts are casually allotted to ideologues who get their compass bearings from Meir Kahane (an American Rabbi who participated in a terrorist organization and who advocated Palestinian genocide is experiencing a popular resurgence) with hardly any protest by the domestic population. No, for Jerusalem Day, 2017, they were singing for Palestinians to be wiped out. Not to mention Harvard’s entry into #BDS was incentivized by an Israeli minister taking control of the Al Aqsa Mosque in the company of 1000 Israeli police officers. This reaction is so first world it hurts. I can’t have my concerts! What a travesty! The bulk of humanity in the meantime is far too poor to do any concerts, and the Palestinians can’t hardly at all. I have hardly been able to go to concerts for decades now, so here’s to getting a clue. Read Part III and IV if you want to have any clue just how milquetoast the environmentalists Thom adheres to are, seeing as they’re funded by some of the bigger ecocide-al profiting billionaires the planet has to offer. PPPS: WE DIDN’T WANT THIS. It’s the ONLY FORM OF POSSIBLE SOCIAL SANCTION left when all world government has failed. And if we didn’t publicly engage in economic sanctions en masse to correct institutionalized social evils that won’t correct internally and are being supported by international governments, the planet would still be blessed with South Africa. And if you want to be ingratiated intellectually with the world and involved intellectually, you quit putting xenophobic racists as your Minister of Defense (Avigdor Leiberman), because the two don’t mesh. For the world to withdraw is corrective. It must be asserted that those traits don’t belong to governance nor civilization, and cannot be sanctioned as such. Brian Eno knows this (along with 1200 other artists). When Thom reached for Noam Chomsky, he lied in the sense that he misrepresented Noam’s views, which can be summed up as basically the broader public are too deluded effectively participate (when is this an excuse), -plus relativism, as in the US is so bad why aren’t we boycotting Harvard first off (-fine, -let’s go for it until they correct their globalized blood bath), and thirdly, that it becomes the subject of focus in debate when Israel opposes BDS, rather than the issues themselves, effectively sidelining them. Noam took the position of opposing BDS on these grounds while acknowledging simultaneously that Israel’s condition is far worse than South Africa’s. Tom Yorke treats Noam’s position as if it’s moral. It is not (and that “sideline” hyperlink dismantles it in depth). Noam doesn’t oppose BDS on principle. He actually supports BDS within limits (quoting from the link above), i.e., “BDS should be limited to opposing Israel’s “occupation” of Palestinian territory conquered in the June, 1967 war, which he emphasized after 2002. In his July, 2014 article, he cited approvingly the ﬁrst goal of the BDS movement, “Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied in June 1967 and dismantling the Wall,” Israel’s “separation barrier,” which effectively annexes to Israel parts of the West Bank.13 This “makes good sense: it has a clear objective and is readily understood by its target audience in the West.”14 Chomsky found “the case” for advocating the second BDS goal, “Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality,” to be “ambiguous.” He acknowledged that Israel’s oppression of its Palestinian citizens violates international law, but found such criticism hypocritical. The call for equal rights for all Israeli citizens “at once opens the door to the ‘glass house’ reaction: for example, if we boycott Tel Aviv University because Israel violates human rights at home, then why not boycott Harvard because of the far greater violations of the United States?”14″ Noam Chomsky disagrees with the third BDS platform as well, support of the right for forcibly expelled Palestinians to return to Israel and the Occupied Territories. In short, as well summarized by one Gregory Smith: “Chomsky supports BDS targeted at Israeli institutions in the Occupied Territories, or Israeli institutions directly linked to the occupation. But he does not support BDS measures targeted at non-occupation-linked institutions inside Israel.” So Thom took it upon himself to reach for a BDS supporter, -claiming to be in alignment with this individual when there is no way to know as Thom gives no position other than to imply one that’s divergent by aspersion, claiming by his usage that this intellectual was against BDS, when Noam’s position was more for than against. Score one for Thom for a patent falsehood.

As for Thom declaring that his position is also shared by J.K. Rowling, her point of reference includes blithely falling for twitter feeds out of Syria, parading this exchange as emotionally authentic when both parties are signed to the same talent agency. Based on the position of that twitter feed, (which has inevitably been rewarded the requisite attention since it cries for Western/US military intervention), Thom’s basically buttressing his position by reaching for imperial lite.

AND THAT FOLKS, IS ALL HE’S GOT. If he wants to participate with the minority against BDS, he has to have a position. Thom has no clue that 80% of Canadians support BDS, whereas the reigning neoliberal Prime Minister has accosted BDS as anti-semetic, an accusation he has the audacity to launch against the vast majority of his constituents who disagree with him. If this is the position Thom has chosen to align with (neoliberalism’s very existence is in order to attenuate and terminate social justice sought by the broader public by defanging the left, -see ‘spectrum shift’’s comments in the above hyperlink for how it decimated the Canadian left), he represented their position rather sorely.

Our Prime Minister is now on record as lying about every liberal platform he appealed to his constituents to vote for him for, -from electoral reform to marijuana legalization to aboriginal reconciliation (we got the Federal forcing of the Trans Mountain pipeline (which has 19 aboriginal cases against it) and the Site C dam instead, (when the Site C is on Treaty 8 land). He was at least honest about his continued support for unwarranted spying against Canadian citizens under the guise of Bill C-51. When he completed the largest arms deal to Saudi Arabia in Canadian history, ranking us among the top five of their arms producers, he said his hands were tied. That’s a neoliberal for you. Thom has also misled the general public in his only public response that makes an effort to buttress his position. His response relies on practically nothing beyond this falsehood as per identifying with an intellectual and a purely petulant emotional response.

The politicians, BTW, that Thom lists on his wall of shame in order to shame BDS, equating them as being equally divisive, are all vehemently against BDS and extreme Israel supporters, and are even responsible for bringing terrorism home domestically, a position which, had Thom Yorke been a voting American, he would have apparently voted for in his fear and loathing of Trump, feeling decidedly righteous about his alignment with these wartime legacies resulting in waves of refugees to Europe, -providing they were the fruition of neoliberals. Not that I looked, but I highly doubt Thom Yorke ever complained about Obama’s bombing of seven Muslim nations, let alone Libya.

Odd how he shames BDS participants by equivocating them with a right wing they are the very opposite of, BDS’s strongest opponents. The point he attempts is leavened in equal measure with the extremity of the insult. Beyond that, he spent the bulk of response wailing about HIS and the BAND’s EMOTIONAL DISCOMFORT at having been confronted by BDS, complaining that any advocate was deeply patronizing. This is literally the sum of his complaint, ignoring the entire backdrop and context as so much graffiti splattered on a wall, asserting that of course they know it all and they of course are so much smarter than that. Yet apparently he didn’t know the situation enough to reference it in his official comeback, we’re just supposed to accept his assertion that he does know based on his oh so superior grounding and mental faculty. We weren’t worth a response, -when Thom’s is problematic to begin with since relying on Jonny Greenwood’s Israeli connection is purely personal anecdote. I’m grounded in this situation purely by my individual personal connection (and that’s more than sufficient) passes the smell test of intellectual rigour nowhere on this planet ever. Worse yet, framing a response almost purely on his and his band’s own personal discomfort to the situation is beyond first world pathetic. His response is all about himself. He can’t even frame a position based on the reality of the situation. In short, he has no argument, and is flaunting the implication that he may have had these arguments in private but to even air his position is far too beneath him, though being massively insulting to everyone who took the opposing position is not, and every one of the artists who appealed to Radiohead not to perform in Tel Aviv falls under his blanket condemnation of having been overwhelmingly patronizing, -based on the laughable repudiation that Thom exists in first person anecdotal “evidence” that makes him “fully grounded”. This doesn’t just reek of condescension. It’s flaming condescension that has nothing backing it up because none of the public opposition is worth active thought. His complaint is that those in opposition didn’t approach the band personally but approached the situation publicly, -notwithstanding that virtually everyone in opposition to Radiohead performing in Tel Aviv has no ability to access Thom Yorke other than publicly, and that is literally how boycott campaigns must operate, by highlighting those who refuse to participate and endorsing those that do. Furthermore, however this was conducted by individual artists, whether there were several instances of personal effrontery involved, which only the band would know, the nature of such exchanges has LITERALLY NO BEARING on the rational debate of whether or not the band should or should not perform in Israel. Yet that is virtually the sum of Thom’s complaint, upset at personal individual treatment of himself and his bandmates, when it is he who has categorized every individual in opposition not on the virtue or failure of their position, but by claiming they were all failures interpersonally. This is not a rejection of their position, but a blanket rejection of them as people (identity politics wins the day in the total evacuation of substance, and on this basis I reject all of you). Because it’s all about how we feel and interact in the debate that matters, and how we feel is the verdict, -effectively erasing the entire substance of the debate. That isn’t a rational reaction. It’s functionally absurd, and Thom parades this as if he’s too intellectual to respond with anything else. Quite priceless when it appears he needs a tap on the shoulder to remind him that feelies never figure in debate?

-At least he tried, right? Which I’m sure is more than can be said for others such as Depeche Mode and RHCP.

I take too long, so thankfully, someone commented at Variety and nailed it PERFECTLY: “Very interesting — he talks about everyone and everything except palestinians. he is in fact erasing them. just because his bandmate is married to an israeli arab means nothing. what does she think? we’re not told. and she is a citizen of israel, not a palestinian who is subject to the brutal and oppressive practices of a half century long israeli occupation that even israelis increasingly describe as apartheid. nor does yorke address the fact that by playing there he is in fact normalizing the occupation and going against the express with wish of the vast majority of palestinian civil society organizations, who have determined this is the best way for them to fight nonviolently against the occupation. instead he gets angry at roger waters for pressing the issue and making him uncomfortable with his friends. perhaps he should consider what it means to live as a palestinian. then complain about how bad he feels. his defense of playing israel reflects both a complete ignorance of the realities of the occupation and the goals of BDS, and the arrogance of someone who is too privileged to actually consider that sometimes you need to take a principled and difficult stand.” -Thank you, Mark LeVine. And yea, everyone at this point who supports BDS is now faced with a personal question. If a band actively refuses to participate in BDS as Radiohead has just done, is it your moral obligation to boycott them for profiting off a performance in Israel? Those profits aren’t small. Let your basis for arriving at this decision be known loud and clear. As for the response below by deathistardy: Isn’t it astonishing how an individual can equivocate the decision not to buy a single concert ticket with advocating death of Israel as if their reaction is rational? The first hyperlink presented in this essay delineates the crippling logical fallacy that gets him there (”identikit straightjacket”). This was the peace process he alludes to. It is redundant that it failed because the failure serves Israel in perpetuity, and is what they desire, because illegal settlements on Palestinian occupied territory have never been halted and the perpetual failure of the peace process allows this travesty to continue. The parity instituted in these negotiations by the US is a paradigm that is completely false. And this, this and this is Ehud Barak. Do not enter here unless you know of what you speak. My dream is Israel’s true integration which might mean it truly inherits its place as God’s nation by embracing a one state solution that embraces their greater heritage and in one fell swoop manages to reverse the crippling tide of colonialism with the purest act of reversing the travesty against them by integrating the indigenous population, -graduating from the most polarized of war time situations by virtue of love and peacemaking. They alone in this world might be capable of such transcendence. We can hope. They could be well capable rectifying the sum of history if they just embraced forgiveness and self-recognition. I believe both sides are fully capable if they just rejected the epic failure that is their leadership.

#thom yorke #rollingstone #israel #bds

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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AMMAN, Jordan — Ala’ Alsallal, 31, has a pitch to make: Invest in the Middle East.

Alsallal is the founder and CEO of Jamalon, an online platform that lets customers buy and ship Arabic and English language books. When I met him at his offices in Amman, Jordan, Alsallal was casually dressed in jeans and a tucked-in button-down shirt, his short beard covering a youthful, earnest face.

Alsallal is a Jordanian-born descendent of Palestinian refugees, and he started his highly successful online bookstore in 2010 out of his family’s home in Amman. Jamalon is estimated at making $2.6 million annually in revenue, employs more than 60 people at its headquarters in Amman, and recently opened an office in Dubai, the financial hub of the Middle East.

The company has been referred to as the Amazon of the Middle East, but that label doesn’t quite do it justice: The platform’s success, after all, is based on meeting a demand that Amazon has overlooked.

Jamalon offers more than 12 million books, including 150,000 in Arabic, and recently added a self-publishing book service based out of Dubai. Amazon, by contrast, offers only a few hundred books in Arabic, and is often difficult and costly to use in the Arab world.

This online bookstore is just one of the many startups redefining the Middle East’s booming tech and entrepreneurial scene. Last year, Arab entrepreneurs raised more than $3 billion in technology investments for the region — the highest ever, according to Bloomberg.

Jamalon participating at the Sharjah International book Fair in the United Arab Emirates on November 8, 2016. Courtesy of Jamalon

E-commerce sites like souq.com and ride-sharing apps like Careem are turning a profit while changing people’s experiences and expectations. And increasing access to smartphones has also reduced the technology gap between the haves and the have-nots across the Middle East and North Africa.

But the Middle East’s start up boom is not just the result of smart, tech-savvy young entrepreneurs convincing their families and friends to fund them. Part of what distinguishes this startup scene is people’s ability to create “workarounds” to the region’s many institutional, political, and economic problems — pragmatic approaches that also resonate with other parts of the world.

Founder and CEO Ala’ Alsallal intends to expand the market for Arabic publications. Miriam Berger/Vox

Almost a decade ago, Alsallal founded Jamalon out of his home, with the help of his mother and two sisters. He was frustrated by how hard it was to find and acquire books in Arabic.

“My mission is to create more content in Arabic so people can learn, get connected, and [close] the gap between what we have access to and what the West has access to,” he said during a July meeting in Jamalon’s bustling main office in Amman, which features amenities like pool tables that Silicon Valley types would find familiar.

Jamalon’s target population is increasingly literate and growing. Adult literacy rates in Arab countries rose from 55 percent in 1999 to 75 percent in 2010, while overall rates during this period rose from 89 to 92 percent, according to UNESCO.

But the supply of Arabic language books hasn’t kept pace: Places like Amazon offer comparatively few options, so publishers in the Arab world have continued to rely on roaming book festivals to market many of their products. It’s no surprise, then, that Saudi Arabia, whose highly literate population has money to spend, is one of Jamalon’s top markets, Alsallal said.

Alsallal doesn’t come from money: his parents were school teachers, and he studied in schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the agency that provides services like education, healthcare and food to about five million Palestinian refugees (the same organization that President Donald Trump just cut all US funding for in August).

But Jamalon’s founder credits his success to the people who helped him along the way. When he was just getting started, Alsallal reached out to an Arab entrepreneur, Fadi Ghandour, for help. Ghandour founded Aramex, an express delivery company serving the Arab world, and is also the chair of the region’s leading investment firm, Wamda Capital.

Ghandour ended up becoming Alsallal’s mentor, and his investments helped Jamalon get off the ground.

Alsallal participated in Oasis 500, an incubator in Jordan, or a company which helps early-stage startups by giving them management and financial advice. He also went on a trip organized by the US State Department to bring young Middle Eastern entrepreneurs to America to learn about the startup culture there.

Alsallal (left) during the 2011 Horasis Global Arab Business Meeting. Richter Frank-Jurgen via Flickr

These opportunities are not as rare today as they once were. Around the Middle East, there are now more and more conferences and incubators where entrepreneurs and investors can network and exchange ideas, like the yearly RiseUp summit in Cairo and the Step Conference in Dubai, one of the region’s most popular startup gatherings.

The money has followed. Part of Saudi Arabia’s “2030 vision” for diversifying its economy away from oil dependence includes initiatives to make it easier for entrepreneurs to work there. One highly successful Silicon Valley venture capital firm has created its own Middle East fund, called 500 Falcons, through which it plans to invest $30 million in local companies.

Alsallal says he wants investors to take a second look at the ideas and solutions coming from Arab countries. But there are, of course, a lot of obstacles too.

For many, the Middle East can be a tough place to live, let alone start a business. The wars ravaging Syria and Iraq, widespread and endemic government corruption, conservative norms and regulations adverse to an independent private sector, and a historic reliance on public sector jobs are all factors that can make it really difficult to start a business, especially one that challenges the status quo.

There’s also the issue of youth unemployment: People between the ages of 15 and 29 make up around 30 percent of the population in the Middle East and North Africa, according to the Arab Human Development Report. And in 2014, about one-third of youth in Arab countries were without a job — more than twice the global average.

These circumstances mean that people have to innovate to solve basic problems that entrepreneurs in places like Silicon Valley don’t have to face. For instance, in much of the Middle East (and in many African countries), most people don’t have bank accounts or access to lines of credit.

But many do have easy access to a smartphone and the internet. In Egypt, for example, 35 million people are connected to the internet through smartphones, and 40 percent of the country’s 90 million people have smartphones, according to Ayman Ismail, the founding director of Venture Lab, a startup incubator at American University in Cairo. (Other studies have put overall internet penetration in the Middle East at around 50 percent.)

“A lot of people who don’t have access to financial services through banks are starting to get access to financial systems on their phone,” Ismail said. “And those technology platforms are [playing a role] in expanding access to many services.”

Careem, an Uber-like e-taxi service started in Dubai, has found success in part by following this model: The app allows people to pay by cash or buy prepaid cards if they don’t have an online bank account. Though it was only founded six years ago, Careem is now valued at $1 billion.

Entrepreneurs from the Middle East that I spoke to were also quick to tell me that they aren’t just “copying” ideas from the West; rather, they are drawing from new technologies to solve everyday problems around them based on their own insights and experiences.

Careem allows for cattle to be picked up and ordered through the app. Rizwan Tabassum/AFP/Getty Images

Figuring out ways to circumvent strict government repression has proven to be fertile soil for tech startups. “Freedom of speech still doesn’t exist in the way we would like to see it in the region,” Alsallal says. Many books that include content on religion, politics, and sexuality are banned across the Middle East, often on “national security” grounds — a serious offense that comes with serious penalties, depending on the country.

So the Jamalon founder came up with a compromise: He would not actively promote a banned book on the website, but he would make it available, and always ship one if ordered.

When a government blocks the shipment of a banned book, Alsallel tries to persuade them to change their mind. “I explain to them that everything’s available on the internet,” he told me. “It’s not legally risky because we have several companies. So if you are in Egypt and you order a book through Jamalon, I’ll ship it to you from my Lebanese company. The maximum thing you can do as the Egyptian government is destroy the book.”

But Alsallal says part of the problem is that government officials are often undereducated, underpaid, and lack the technical skills for understanding and dealing with a rapidly changing startup scene.

Though he doesn’t think that more business opportunities will suddenly change the systematic corruption, nepotism, and authoritarian rule plaguing much of the Middle East, he does see the startup community as playing a role in changing some of this by addressing what he calls “miscommunication” between Middle East governments, international financial organizations like the International Monetary Fund, and the region’s entrepreneurs.

“When you have a problem, there are two goals,” he says, “find a workaround to the regulation or the problem with the government or market, and work on changing the government’s agenda.”

In the old days, becoming an engineer or doctor was the best way to show that you had made it in many parts of the Arab world. But now, entrepreneurs and developers are gaining greater recognition and appreciation in places like Cairo, Amman, and Ramallah.

As this kind of work has become more socially acceptable, entrepreneurs say, there’s also been some growth in local funding and mentorship opportunities — key factors behind Silicon Valley’s successful startup ecosystem.

“We always had entrepreneurs in the region,” Ismail, the founding director of Venture Lab, says. “It’s just that most of them were doing traditionally family-owned businesses. What’s been growing over the last decades is more technical and innovation entrepreneurship … things like angel investors and startup incubators.” These are helping push would-be entrepreneurs in the right direction, he said. “They are looking for new ways for launching, supporting, investing in, and growing business.”

Alanoud Faisal, a 30-year-old entrepreneur and investor from Saudi Arabia who’s worked in Riyadh, Dubai, London, and San Jose, California, is one such example.

Faisal initially studied engineering but then switched paths, eventually co-founding a company, Inevert, a London-based global platform that connects startups looking for funding with corporations looking for investments. In a year or two, she predicts positive growth. “The way that now each year we see new venture capitalists pop up, you’ll see [corporations] playing a role with startups,” she said.

Faisal is typical of two trends in the Arab world’s tech scene: she’s young (30 now, 25 when she started), and she’s a woman. The Economist reported that over a quarter of startups in the region are founded or led by women, while that rate is closer to 17 percent in the United States, according to the tech research platform Crunchbase.

Faisal says she hasn’t faced any overt discrimination while working in Saudi Arabia, a highly conservative oil-rich country where women have only just been allowed to drive. She also said that she networks with a very particular strategy in mind. “I have a very straightforward approach when it comes to the people I meet with,” she said. “My time is valuable so I focus on what I want and I execute based on it.”

In Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, where wealth is heavily concentrated among a small number of families, Faisal said she’s increasingly seeing entrepreneurs strike out on their own. “A lot of the up and coming people are like, ‘Yeah, our family supports us, but we want to create our own legacy,’” she said. “Even if they get the support initially, they want to do it on their own to prove they can.”

“Everyone has a global mentality,” she added.

It’s that global mentality that’s attracting investment from around the world — and that young entrepreneurs in the Middle East hope will help transform their visions for the future.

Miriam Berger is freelance journalist with a focus on people, politics, and policy in the Middle East.

Original Source -> Why innovative tech startups are thriving across the Middle East

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At this moment, 1.5 million people from dozens of countries around the world are in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, to perform the hajj, the Islamic religious pilgrimage.

It’s a huge event — in terms of both its significance in Islam and the massive logistical challenge of having that many people from all walks of life and every corner of the globe descend on one relatively small place all at once.

But what actually goes on at the hajj? What is its religious and political significance? How do they handle all those people? And what is inside that big black box?

We’ve got you covered: Here are the most basic answers to the most basic questions about the hajj.

The hajj — Arabic for “pilgrimage” — is a five-day religious pilgrimage to Mecca and nearby holy sites in Saudi Arabia that all Muslims who are physically and financially able must perform at least once in their lives. It is one of the five pillars, or duties, of Islam, along with the profession of faith in the one God and Mohammed as his prophet, prayer, charitable giving, and fasting during the holy month of Ramadan.

The hajj takes place only once a year, in the 12th and final month of the Islamic lunar calendar; pilgrimages to Mecca made at other times in the year are encouraged but do not count as the hajj. Because the Islamic lunar calendar is about 11 days shorter than the 365 days of the standard Gregorian calendar, the timing of the hajj moves backward each year.

Over the five days of the hajj, pilgrims perform a series of rituals meant to symbolize their unity with other believers and to pay tribute to God. On the last three days of the hajj, pilgrims — as well as all other Muslims around the world — celebrate Eid al-Adha, or the Festival of Sacrifice. This is one of the two major religious holidays Muslims celebrate every year. (The other is Eid al-Fitr, which comes at the end of Ramadan.)

At the end of the hajj, pilgrims return home and are often given the honorific “hajji,” meaning one who has performed the hajj. (One interesting note here: During the Iraq War, US troops frequently used the term “hajji” as a derogatory term for any Iraqi, Arab, or other person of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent. So although they certainly didn’t mean it this way, and it almost certainly wasn’t taken this way by the person on the receiving end of the slur, US troops were inadvertently applying a term of respect and honor to these individuals.)

People may be surprised to learn that the hajj has very little to do with the Prophet Mohammed. Rather, it mostly commemorates events in the life of the Prophet Ibrahim — that is, Abraham. Yes, that Abraham.

If you’re from a non-Abrahamic faith tradition or if it’s just been a while since Sunday school, Abraham is a venerated patriarchal figure in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Baha’i faith. He is perhaps best known for being willing to personally kill his beloved son when God commanded him to do so. At the last minute, so the story goes, God stepped in and told Abraham to sacrifice an animal instead, rewarding Abraham’s unwavering faith.

In the Judeo-Christian narrative, the son Abraham almost sacrifices is Isaac. In Islam, however, it’s Abraham’s other son, Ismail (Ishmael), who is almost sacrificed. Muslims consider both Abraham and Ismail to be prophets of God, and Mohammed’s ancestry is said to be traced back to Ismail.

There is another event involving Ismail and his mother, Hagar, that looms large in the hajj. The story goes like this: God commanded Abraham, as a test of faith, to take Hagar and the infant Ismail out to a barren desert area located between the two hills of Safa and Marwah in Mecca, and leave them there alone with only basic provisions. Eventually the water ran out, and the increasingly frantic Hagar ran back and forth from hill to hill seven times searching for water for her parched child.

Then a miracle occurred: A well, later called the Zamzam well, sprang from the ground, saving both of them. The story of how the well was discovered differs: Some accounts say it was the baby Ismail’s distressed kicking of his feet that scratched away the dirt and revealed the water source. Other accounts hold that the angel Gabriel (Jibril in Arabic) tipped his wing into the dirt to reveal the well.

Abraham and Ismail later went on to build the Kaaba, the black cuboid structure in Mecca that Muslims face when they pray — together, as a place of worship of the one God. (Abraham eventually came back and retrieved his family from the desert, evidently.)

Soon after they built the Kaaba, tradition holds, God commanded Abraham to proclaim a pilgrimage to the site — in other words, the hajj — to all mankind (well, all monotheists) so that they can come together in one place to show their devotion to God.

Muslims around the world face the direction of the Kaaba — Arabic for “cube” — when they pray, but they don’t worship the Kaaba (or the Black Stone). Rather, it is a place of worship of the one God. It is also a focusing mechanism, a central point on the globe toward which all Muslims, in a symbol of unity, direct their thoughts and prayers to God.

According to Islamic tradition, the site of the Kaaba was originally a sacred place where angels would worship God in the days before man was created. Later, Adam (yes, that Adam, partner to Eve) built a shrine to God on that spot, but it too was destroyed by the ravages of time. When Abraham came along, he and his son Ismail rebuilt the Kaaba on the foundations of Adam’s earlier shrine as a place of worship of the one God.

The structure consists of four walls and a roof, all made from stone from the hills surrounding Mecca. The four corners roughly face the four points of the compass. The building is often referred to as a “cube” (that’s where “Kaaba” comes from, after all), but this is not technically correct. To be a true geometric cube, all its edges must have the same length, and every corner in the cube must have an angle of 90 degrees.

The Kaaba’s edges are not all the same length, so therefore it is best described as a “cuboid,” not a “cube.” It is covered by a black silk cloth decorated with verses of the Quran in gold-embroidered Arabic calligraphy. This cloth is known as the kiswah, and it is replaced yearly, on the second day of the hajj.

While Abraham was building the Kaaba, so the legend goes, the angel Gabriel came down and gave Abraham the famous Black Stone, which he placed in the eastern corner of the structure.

There is another squarish stone on the ground a few feet away from the Kaaba with what look like two footprints in it. This is known as the Station of Abraham and is said to be the stone where Abraham stood while watching over the construction of the Kaaba. Today it is encased in a beautifully ornate golden glass-and-metal structure.

There is a famous story in Islam about Mohammed and the Black Stone. By Mohammed’s time, the Kaaba had again been damaged and was being repaired (it has been damaged or destroyed and rebuilt or repaired numerous times over the centuries). The story goes that when construction was finished and it came time to place the Black Stone back in the eastern corner, the final step, the tribes of Mecca argued fiercely over who would get to do the honors.

They decided to ask the next man who walked by to decide for them, and that man happened to be Mohammed. His solution was to put the stone on a large cloth and have each of the leaders of the four tribes hold a corner of the cloth and carry the stone to its place. Mohammed himself then placed the stone into its final position.

This was back before Mohammed had received his first revelation from God. The next time Mohammed was involved with the Kaaba, though, would prove to be much less … harmonious.

Islamic tradition holds that although Abraham built the Kaaba to worship the one God, over time the Kaaba had been more or less co-opted by the various pagan tribes in the area, all of whom had placed idols to their preferred deity inside the Kaaba, thereby “corrupting” it.

One particularly popular idol was a figure of Hubal, a moon deity worshipped by many in Mecca at the time. Access to the Kaaba (and thus the idol) was controlled by the powerful Quraysh tribe, of which Mohammed was a member, and they basically capitalized on this to get rich, charging fees and selling wares to pilgrims coming to worship the idol.

When Mohammed began receiving revelations from God (he received his first one about five years after the incident with the Black Stone) and preaching his message of monotheism, the rich Qurayshi merchants started getting a little antsy. Worried that the growing popularity of his decidedly anti-idol worshiping message could potentially hurt business, they ran Mohammed and his small band of followers out of town.

Ten years later, Mohammed and his now much larger and more powerful army of followers defeated the Quraysh tribe and took control of Mecca. One of Mohammed’s first acts upon taking control of the city was to go into the Kaaba and smash the idol of Hubal and the hundreds of other idols to pieces, rededicating the shrine as a place of worship of the one God.

Today, the Kaaba is kept closed during the hajj because of the overwhelming number of people, but those who visit the Kaaba during other times of the year are sometimes allowed to go inside. It’s quite beautiful: The walls are white marble on the lower half and green cloth on the upper half. There is very little inside it, though — just three tall stone pillars, a small table, some hanging lamp–looking things, and a staircase to the roof.

Oh, and aliens.

These aren’t the aliens. They’re just Arabs on cellphones. Inside the Kaaba. British Hajj Travel on Instagram (@bhtofficial)

Just kidding.

The most well-known ritual is the tawaf (literally “circumambulation”), during which pilgrims circle the Kaaba counterclockwise seven times at both the very beginning and the very end of the hajj. Although it’s not entirely clear exactly why it’s seven specifically, many believe it has to do with the motion of celestial bodies. Seven is also a prominent number associated with the divine in many religions, including Christianity and Judaism.

Other rituals include a ceremony where pilgrims throw small pebbles at three large stone walls, called jamarat, to symbolize the stoning the devil that tempted Abraham to defy God, and the slaughtering of an animal (usually a sheep) to honor the animal Abraham slaughtered instead of his son.

The meat is then given to feed the poor and needy. These days, pilgrims frequently elect to purchase tokens to have an animal slaughtered for them.

Muslim pilgrims perform the ritual stoning of the devil in Mina near the holy city of Mecca on November 27, 2009. MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/Getty Images

There is also a ritual called Sa’ee, in which pilgrims walk back and forth between the two hills of Safa and Marwah seven times to commemorate Hagar’s frantic search for water for her infant son.

Today, both hills are enclosed within the Masjid al-Haram (Sacred Mosque) complex (which also houses the Kaaba), and the path between the hills is a long, beautiful indoor gallery with marble floors and air conditioning. Many also drink from the Zamzam well located there.

The only ritual that is solely related to Mohammed is the climbing of Mount Arafat, which is where Mohammed preached his last sermon. On the second day of hajj, pilgrims wake at dawn and walk a short distance to Mount Arafat, where they spend the remainder of the day on or near the mountain in quiet worship and contemplation of God.

No. Although Christians and Jews believe in the God of Abraham, they are not allowed to perform the hajj. Indeed, the government of Saudi Arabia forbids all non-Muslims from entering the holy city of Mecca at all.

A highway sign on the road to Mecca points out mandatory directions away from the city for all non-Muslims. Reza/Getty Images

The Saudi government takes this very seriously, so the odds that a non-Muslim would be able to slip in unnoticed among the throngs of pilgrims undetected or pretend to be Muslim and get in that way are extremely small. It’s not completely impossible — it has happened a handful of times over the centuries — but given the millions who attend every single year, the rate of success is miniscule. The Saudis have been doing this for a long time, and they’re not idiots.

Legal entry into the country is extremely tightly controlled, and the paperwork required to get a hajj visa is incredibly detailed. Pilgrims must book their hajj trip through a Saudi government–approved hajj travel agent. For a Western Muslim convert to be allowed to go on hajj, he or she must present documentation from an imam (Muslim religious leader). The imam must testify in writing that he knows the person in question and that the person is a true convert.

Trying to come in on a regular tourist visa and then stealthily making your way to Mecca is also a nonstarter. Getting a tourist visa as a Westerner is notoriously hard, and the likelihood of you being able to just slip away from your Saudi government minder and travel undetected all the way from the capital Riyadh to Mecca — more than 500 miles away, on the other side of a vast desert — is basically laughable.

The only way for a non-Muslim to get in is essentially to play the long con, pretending to convert to Islam seemingly sincerely enough to convince the local imam that you’re for real. That has happened before: In 2015, WND published a three-part series written pseudonymously by someone who claimed to be a white British non-Muslim man who successfully fake-converted to Islam and went on hajj.

So it’s not impossible. But you have to really, really, really want to go to all that trouble and risk potentially being deported and banned from the country (not to mention causing a major international incident and pissing off just about every Muslim on the planet) just to get into a city to see some sites that aren’t even of religious significance to you.

Parents may choose to bring even their very young children with them, but the hajj won’t “count” toward fulfilling the child’s personal religious obligation, as that requires the child to be mature enough intellectually and spiritually to understand the significance of the hajj.

Women are also allowed — indeed, required, just like every other physically and financially able Muslim is — to perform the hajj. However, they have to be accompanied by an appropriate male guardian (called a mahram). Here are the rules, per the US State Department:

Women below the age of 45 must be accompanied by a “mahram” (e.g. close adult, male relative such as a husband, son, father, or brother) for Hajj. Women must be met by their sponsor upon arrival. Women who are traveling alone and not met by sponsors have experienced delays before being allowed to enter the country or to continue on other flights.

Women over 45 may travel without a mahram in an organized group, provided they submit a notarized letter of no objection from the husband, son, or brother, authorizing travel for Hajj with the named group. Violators face deportation.

Women who are members of the minority Shia sect of Islam (the majority of the world’s Muslims are Sunni), on the other hand, are not required by Saudi authorities to have a mahram when attending hajj and are allowed to travel alone. This is likely because Shia scholars have, unlike Sunni scholars, ruled that a woman may travel alone on hajj if she feels that she will be safe.

And since it’s basically impossible to talk about women in Islam these days without someone bringing up the issue of how much clothing they’re required (or not required) to wear, here’s a fun fact: Although women must cover their hair with a scarf, the face veil, known as a niqab, and the burqa, the garment that covers from head to toe with only a mesh-like panel through which to see, are not allowed during hajj.

Yes, you read that right: The two pieces of clothing that are the most controversial and are seen by many anti-Islam critics as symbols of the pervasive and pernicious cultural intrusion of Islam and its inherent oppression of women, are not allowed during one of Islam’s most sacred rituals, even though men and women mix freely during it.

Some women still wear them, though, despite the prohibition, and it doesn’t seem to be something that’s actually enforced. Some have also come up with rather creative workarounds, such as wearing large, darkly tinted sunglasses and those paper face masks doctors wear.

So why the prohibition? The reason is basically that while Mohammed’s various statements regarding women’s dress are hotly debated among Muslim scholars (Mohammed lived a long time, after all, and he said a lot of things over the course of his life), his statement on women not covering their faces (or hands) during hajj is crystal clear: A woman in the state of ritual purity for hajj “should not cover her face or wear gloves.” Not a whole lot of room for debate there (though, of course, people still do debate it, because humans).

Men also wear special clothing during hajj. Male pilgrims wear two pieces of clean, unstitched cloth (usually plain white) — one wrapped around their waist and one wrapped around their torso — and plain sandals. The purpose of making all men dress in this same simple garb is to strip away all indications of wealth and status so that all pilgrims are seen as equal, as they are in the eyes of God.

In general, the Saudi government does a pretty good job at managing things, all things considered. But not always: Over the years, there have been many horrific examples of large numbers of people dying.

1.5 million people are attending the hajj this year. That’s way bigger than the Olympics (10,500 athletes and 500,000 foreign tourists went to Rio for the 2016 Olympics), Burning Man (the annual gathering in the Nevada desert currently has an attendance cap of 70,000), and the average Taylor Swift concert combined.

It’s not the biggest world event — that honor probably goes to the Kumbh Mela Hindu religious festival held every three years in India (in 2013, some 100 million people are believed to have attended) — but it’s still pretty impressive. For instance, the Saudi government’s target for the number of people performing tawaf (circling the Kaaba seven times) last year was 107,000 an hour.

But considering there are an estimated 1.6 billion Muslims on the planet, all of whom are required to perform the hajj at least once in their lives if they are financially and physically able, the numbers could actually be a lot higher. The main reason they aren’t is because every year the Saudi government sets quotas for each country on how many pilgrims they’re allowed to send on hajj.

To manage the people who do get to come, the Saudi government has invested billions of dollars in building a vast and elaborate infrastructure in and around the holy sitesa massive hajj terminal at the main airport in Riyadh, a complex network of roads to bring pilgrims to the city of Mecca, wide foot bridges to carry the tens of thousands of pedestrians who move from place to place at preset, staggered times to minimize traffic flow (personal vehicles are prohibited, for obvious reasons, so most people walk everywhere, though some — mostly the elderly — take shuttle buses), multi-tiered galleries around the Kaaba and the jamarat (the stone walls where the symbolic stoning of the devil takes place), and more.

Perhaps the most stunning logistical feat, though, is the vast tent city at Mina, located just a few kilometers from Mecca, where more than 160,000 air-conditioned, fireproof, Teflon-coated fiberglass tents provide temporary accommodation for pilgrims. Men and women, even married couples, sleep in separate tents. The majority of the tents can accommodate about 50 people, and the average price for each pilgrim is $500, according to Al Jazeera’s Basma Atassi.

However, luxury tents costing as much as $10,000 per pilgrim — including some equipped with jacuzzis — are available for those few wealthy enough to afford them. As Atassi writes, though, the Saudi government in recent years has taken steps to ban them, stating that they “defied the spirit of the Hajj.”

An aerial view taken on October 27, 2012, shows of thousands of pilgrims’ tents in Mina during the annual Hajj. FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP/Getty Images

For 51 weeks of the year, the tent city, roads, and other infrastructure built to accommodate pilgrims are almost completely deserted. Then for one week each year, they seethe with humanity.

There is also an extensive security apparatus in place to monitor every aspect of the hajj — to maintain order and safety, but also to ensure that proper Islamic protocol is followed by all in attendance. This year, the Saudis have deployed tens of thousands of security forces to control crowds and help keep pilgrims safe.

Unfortunately, that same number of security forces wasn’t enough to prevent catastrophe from striking in 2015: That year, more than 2,400 people were killed when a stampede occurred at the intersection of two pedestrian walkways leading out of the tent city toward the jamarat bridge.

Though this was the deadliest hajj disaster in history, other disasters have occurred. As Al Jazeera’s Atassi notes:

A 1990 stampede inside a pedestrian tunnel killed almost 1,500 people, while stampedes in the stoning of the devil area in 1990, 1994, 1998, 2003, 2004 and 2006 claimed the lives of hundreds. The eruption of a fire in 1997 burned thousands of tents and killed over 300 people.

Health issues are also a major concern during the hajj. So many people from all corners of the globe gathering in such a small area means the chances of contagious diseases spreading through the population are very high. There is also a high risk of heat stroke, heat exhaustion, dehydration, and sunburn, especially when the hajj falls in the summer months (as it does this year). For instance, in August 1985, 2,000 cases of heatstroke were reported, and more than 1,000 of the sufferers died within a few days.

To try to prevent this from happening, the Saudi government makes all pilgrims adhere to strict guidelines regarding vaccinations, especially for particularly contagious diseases such as meningitis. Pilgrims are also advised to drink lots of water and to be mindful of the perils of the blistering desert heat.

The Saudi government also provides complimentary water distributed from refrigerated trucks, air-conditioned tents at Mina, large sun-blocking canopies, and thousands of fine-mist sprinklers, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Medical facilities are also available in and around the main hajj sites. As Asaad Shujaa and Sameer Alhamid write in the Turkish Journal of Emergency Medicine, in 2012 there were 25 hospitals with 4,427 bed capacity (500 critical care and 550 emergency care) and 141 health centers with 20,000 qualified specialized personnel. They also note that all health care is provided at no cost to all pilgrims.

And, finally, there’s the politics.

Saudi Arabia and Iran have for years been in a sort of proxy struggle for dominance of the Middle East and the broader Muslim world. Saudi Arabia’s government is officially Sunni, and Iran’s is officially Shia. Both countries frequently exploit this by pushing a sectarian worldview of Sunni versus Shia. And that often comes to a head over the hajj.

The political legitimacy of the Saudi royal family rests largely on its religious credentials, which it gets at home from the support of the country’s ultra-conservative Wahhabi religious establishment, and internationally from being the “custodian” of the two holiest places in Islam, the Prophet Mohammed’s mosque in Medina and Masjid al-Haram in Mecca.

Iran, then, has long sought to portray the Saudis as incompetent custodians in an effort to damage their credibility, and has even called for an international body to take over administration of these places. When a horrific stampede occurred at the 2015 hajj, Iran jumped at the chance to blame the Saudis.

More than 400 Iranian pilgrims were reportedly killed in the incident. But before most of the victims had even been identified, Iranian leaders issued statements blaming the Saudis for the accident.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei stated, “The Saudi government is obliged to accept its heavy responsibility in this bitter incident and meet its obligations in compliance with the rule of righteousness and fairness; mismanagement and improper measures that were behind this tragedy should not be undermined,” and declared three days of mourning for the victims of the stampede.

The fight bled into the 2016 hajj. Khamenei issued a blistering statement on his website calling the Saudis murderers for their handling of the stampede last year and suggesting they may even have caused the stampede on purpose:

Saudi rulers were at fault in both cases. This is what all those present, observers and technical analysts agree upon. Some experts maintain that the events were premeditated. The hesitation and failure to rescue the half-dead and injured people, whose enthusiastic souls and enthralled hearts were accompanying their praying tongues on Eid ul-Adha, is also obvious and incontrovertible. The heartless and murderous Saudis locked up the injured with the dead in containers- instead of providing medical treatment and helping them or at least quenching their thirst. They murdered them.

Not to be outdone, Saudi Arabia’s top religious leader struck back, accusing the Iranians of being pagan fire worshipers, not Muslims. From Al Jazeera:

In comments to the Makkah newspaper published on Tuesday, Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Abdulaziz Al Sheikh was quoted as saying that Khamenei’s remarks blaming Riyadh for last year’s tragedy were “not surprising” because Iranians are descendants of Magi.

Magi refers to Zoroastrians and those who worship fire. Predating Christianity and Islam, Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion in Persia before the Arab conquest.

“We must understand they are not Muslims, for they are the descendants of Majuws, and their enmity towards Muslims, especially the Sunnis, is very old,” Saudi’s grand mufti said, according to the AP news agency.

The Iranians also decided to bar their citizens from attending the hajj at all last year, claiming the Saudis failed to adequately guarantee the safety of Iranian pilgrims and accusing them of having “blocked the proud and faithful Iranian pilgrims’ path to the Beloved’s House [the Kaaba].” The Saudis, of course, blamed the Iranians, arguing they had refused to sign the agreement both sides had reached over the 2016 hajj:

“Saudi Arabia does not prevent anyone from performing the religious duty,” the Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, said at a news conference with his visiting British counterpart, Philip Hammond.

“Iran refused to sign the memorandum and was practically demanding the right to hold demonstrations and to have other advantages … that would create chaos during hajj, which is not acceptable,” he added.

Whoever’s fault it was, no Iranian pilgrims were allowed at the hajj in 2016. In 2017, however, Iran lifted the ban, and around 80,000 Iranians performed the hajj that year.

And there are tons of Shia Muslims from other countries, too. For the most part, Sunni and Shia pilgrims on hajj get along just fine — despite the best efforts of the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia to stir up sectarian tension every year for geopolitical gain.

That Sunni and Shia pilgrims come together as brothers and sisters in Islam during the hajj is a powerful reminder of how religion can unite people as well as divide them. Pilgrims planning to go on hajj are advised to avoid conflict and disagreement with other Muslims, to refrain from judging or being harsh toward others whose customs or interpretations of Islam may seem ignorant or incorrect.

Because that’s what the hajj is really supposed to be about: believers from around the world coming together, putting aside linguistic, cultural, class, and sectarian differences, and worshiping God.

Original Source -> Hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, explained for non-Muslims

via The Conservative Brief

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