Pakistan: Towards a modern Riyasat-e-Madina

Nadeem F Paracha in The Friday Times

On January 17, an article written by PM Imran Khan appeared in some English and Urdu dailies. In it, the Pakistani prime minister shared his thoughts on ‘Riyasat-e-Madinah,’ or the first ‘Islamic state’ that came into being in early 7th-century Arabia. PM Khan wrote that Pakistan will need to adopt the moral and spiritual tenor of that state if the country was to thrive.

Even before he came to power in 2018, Khan had been promising to turn Pakistan into a modern-day Riyasat-e-Madinah. He first began to formulate this as a political message in 2011. However, this idea is not a new one. It has been posited previously as well by some politicians, and especially, by certain Islamist ideologues. Neither is there any newness in the process used by Khan to arrive at this idea. Khan took the same route as ZA Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) took decades ago. In 1967, when the PPP was formed, its ‘foundation documents’ — authored by Bhutto and the Marxist intellectual J.A. Rahim — described the party as a socialist entity. To neutralise the expected criticism from Islamist groups, the documents declared that democracy was the party’s policy, socialism was its economy, and Islam was its faith.

The documents then added that by “socialism” the party meant the kind of democratic-socialism practiced in Scandinavian countries such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland; and through which these countries had constructed robust welfare states. But this did not impress Islamist outfits, especially the Jamat-i-Islami (JI). It declared the PPP as a party of ‘atheists.’ In 1969, JI’s chief Abul Ala Maududi, authored a fatwa declaring socialism as an atheistic idea. The next year, when the PPP drafted its first ever manifesto, the party explained that its aim to strive for democracy, a “classless society,” economic equality and social justice “flows from the the political and economic ethics of Islam.”

After coming to power in December 1971, the PPP began using the term “Musawat-e-Muhammadi” (social and economic equality preached and practiced by Islam’s holy Prophet [PBUH]). In 1973, a prominent member of the PPP, Sheikh Ahmed Rashid, declared that the economic system that Islam advocated and the one that was implemented in the earliest state of Islam was socialist. When a parliament member belonging to an Islamist party demanded that Islamic rituals be made compulsory by law “because Pakistan was made in the name of Islam,” Rashid responded by saying that the country was not made to implement rituals, but to adopt an “Islamic economy” which was “inherently socialist.”

Now let us see just how close all this is to the route that PM Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) took in formulating their concept of Riyasat-i-Madinah. In 2011, PTI and Khan suddenly rose to prominence as a party of urban middle-classes and the youth. In his speeches between 2011 and 2015, Khan was quite vocal in his appreciation of the Scandinavian welfare states. But, often, this appreciation was immediately followed by Khan declaring that the non-Muslim Scandinavians had uncannily followed Islamic ideals of social justice and economic equality better than the Muslims had (or do). Of course, he did not mention that Scandinavian countries are some of the most secular nation-states in the world, and that a strong secular-humanist disposition of their polities and politics played a major role in the construction of the welfare states that Khan was in such awe of.

As the 2018 elections drew near, Khan began to explain the concept of the European welfare state as a modern-day reflection of the 7th-century state that was formed in the city of Madinah. This notion was close to Bhutto’s Musawat-e-Muhamadi. But Bhutto and his PPP had claimed that the Islamic state in Madinah had a socialist economy, and that this alone should be adopted by Pakistan, because it was still relevant in the 20th century. This position had given the PPP enough space to remain secular in most other areas. But to Khan, if the Scandinavian model of the welfare state is adopted, and then supplemented by Islam’s moral, spiritual and political ethos in all fields and areas, this would result in the modern-day re-enactment of a 7th-century ‘Islamic state.’ Khan’s idea in this this context is thus more theocratic in nature.

Khan’s concept seemed to be emerging from how Pakistan was imagined by some pro-Jinnah ulema during the 1946 elections in British India. To Mr. Jinnah’s party, the All India Muslim League (AIML), the culture of Indian Muslims largely mirrored the culture of Muslims outside South Asia, particularly in Arabia and even Persia. But the politics and economics of India’s Muslim were grounded in India and/or in the territory that they had settled in 500 years ago. Therefore, the Muslim-majority state that the League was looking to create was to be established in this territory. The League’s Muslim nationalism was thus territorial. It was not to be a universal caliphate or a theocracy with imperial and expansionist aims. It was to be a sovereign political enclave in South Asia where the Muslim minority of India would become a majority, thus benefiting from the economic advantages of majoritarianism.

However, whereas this narrative – more or less – worked in attracting the votes of the Muslims of Bengal and Sindh during the 1946 polls, the League found itself struggling in Punjab, which was a bastion of the multicultural Union Party. The Congress, too, was strong here. Various radical Islamist groups were also headquartered in Punjab. They had rejected the League’s call for a separate country. They believed that it would turn the remaining Muslims in India into an even more vulnerable minority. The Islamists viewed the League as a secular outfit with westernised notions of nationalism and an impious leadership.

This is when some ulema switched sides and decided to support the League in Punjab. This is also when overt Islamist rhetoric was, for the first time, used by the League through these ulema, mainly in Punjab’s rural areas. The ulema began to portray Jinnah as a ‘holy figure,’ even though very few rural Punjabis had actually seen him. The well-known Islamic scholar Shabbir Ahmed Usmani, who left the anti-Jinnah Jamiat Ulema Islam Hind (JUIH) to support the League, began to explain the yet-to-be-born Pakistan as a “naya Madinah,” or new Madinah.

By this, Usmani meant the creation of a state that would be based on the model of the 7th century state in Madina. But, much to the disappointed of the pro-League ulema, the model adopted by Pakistan was largely secular and the Islam that the state espoused was carved from the ideas of ‘Muslim modernists’ such as the reformer Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (d.1898) and the poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal (d.1938), who urged Muslims to look forward with the aid of an evolved and rational understanding of Islam, instead of looking backwards to a romanticised past.

***

 
Khan often spoke about Riyasat-i-Madinah before he became PM. But the frequency of him doing so has increased in the last year and a half – or when his government began to truly unravel. Today, it is in deep crises and expected to either be eased out by the Parliament, or knocked out in a ruder manner before it completes its term in 2023. The economy is in shambles, inflation and unemployment rates are climbing, and so are tensions between the government and its erstwhile patrons, the military establishment.

Amidst the growing crises, Khan has spoken more about morality, ‘westernisation,’ and Islamophobia than on how his government is planning to address the mounting economic problems that the country is facing, and the consequential political quagmire that his government has plunged into. Yet, he still somehow found a reason – or for that matter, the audacity – to lecture the polity on the moral and spiritual principles of Riyasat-i-Madinah, or the kind of morally upright and pious state and society that he is dreaming of constructing. One wonders if he is planning to do this with the large IMF loans that his government has had to acquire to keep the country from going bankrupt?

Khan’s article on Riyasat-i-Madinah was censured by the opposition parties. They saw it as a political ploy by him to distract the people from the failures of his government. There is evidence that a PR company hired by Khan has been advising him to raise the frequency of his Islamic rhetoric. The purpose behind this could be what the opposition is claiming. It might also be about something personal. But for men such as Khan, the personal often becomes the political.

According to political scientist David O’Connell, it is crisis, not political convenience, that more often brings out religion in politicians. In his book God Wills It, O’Connell argues that when public opinion of political leaders begins to dwindle, or when a head of state or government is threatened, that is when one sees religious rhetoric appear.

In 1976, when the Bhutto regime was struggling to address economic problems caused by an international oil crisis that had pushed up inflation, and due to the regime’s own mismanagement of important economic sectors that it had nationalised, Bhutto decided to organise a grand ‘Seerat Conference’ in Karachi. The conference was organised to discuss and highlight the life and deeds of Islam’s Prophet (PBUH) and how these could be adopted to regenerate the lost glory of the Islamic civilisation. Khan did exactly the same, late last year.

Bhutto’s intended audience in this respect was the Islamists who he had uncannily emboldened by agreeing to their demand of constitutionally ousting the Ahmadiyya community from the fold of Islam. He believed that this would neutralise the threat that the Islamists were posing to his ‘socialist’ government. The demand had risen when the Islamist groups in the Parliament had asked the government to provide the constitution with the provision to define what or who was a Muslim. In 1973, the government had refused to add any such provision in the constitution. But the very next year in 1974, when a clash between a group of Ahmadiyya youth and cadres of the student-wing of JI caused outrage amongst Islamist parties, they tabled a bill in the National Assembly which sought to constitutionally declare the Ahmadiyya as a non-Muslim community.

Bhutto threatened to unleash the military against anti-Ahmadiyya agitators who had besieged various cities of Punjab. According to Rafi Raza, who, at the time, was a special assistant to the prime minister, Bhutto insisted that the Parliament was no place to discuss theological matters. In his book ZA Bhutto and Pakistan, Raza wrote that the Islamist parties retorted by reminding the PM that in 1973 the constitution had declared Pakistan an ‘Islamic republic’ – and therefore, parliamentarians in an Islamic republic had every right to discuss religious matters.

After much violence in Punjab and commotion in the National Assembly, Bhutto capitulated and allowed the bill to be passed. This also meant that parliamentarians now had the constitutional prerogative to define who was or wasn’t a Muslim. This would eventually lead to the 1985 amendments in Articles 62 and 63 of the constitution, proclaiming that only ‘pious’ Muslims can be members of the Parliament and heads of state and government. The man who had initiated this, the dictator Zia-ul-Haq, had already declared himself ‘Sadiq and Amin’ (honest and faithful).

In 1976, Bhutto’s Islamist opponents were deriding him as a ‘bad Muslim,’ because he had ‘loose morals,’ was an ‘alcoholic,’ and that his government was as bad at fixing the economy as it was in curbing the “rising trend of obscenity and immorality in the society.” So, with the Seerat Conference, Bhutto set out to exhibit his Islamic credentials and, perhaps, to also demonstrate that his regime may be struggling to fix the economy, but, at least, it was being headed by a ‘true believer.’ But this didn’t save him from being toppled in a military coup that was triggered by his opponents who, in 1977, had poured out to agitate and demand a government based on Shariah laws.

Khan is on a similar path. He had been ‘reforming’ himself ever since he retired in 1992 as a cricketing star, a darling of tabloid press, and a ‘playboy.’ From a lifestyle liberal who had spent much of his time stationed in the UK, playing cricket and hobnobbing with European and American socialites, he gradually began to refigure his image. After retirement from cricket at age 40, he was mostly seen with prominent military men such as General Hamid Gul, who had once been extremely close to the dictator Zia-ul-Haq.

Khan also began to have one-on-one meetings with certain ulema and Islamic evangelical groups. Khan’s aim was to bury his colourful past and re-emerge as an incorruptible born-again Muslim. But his past was not that easy to get rid of. It kept being brought up by the tabloids and also by Nawaz Sharif’s centre-right PML-N, which began to see him as a threat because Khan was trying to appeal to Sharif’s constituency. Sharif was a conservative and a protégé of Zia. In 1998, his second regime was struggling to fix an economy that had begun to spiral down after Pakistan conducted its first nuclear tests. This triggered economic sanctions against Pakistan, imposed by its major donors and trading partners, the US and European countries.

The crisis saw Nawaz formulate his own ‘Islamic’ shenanigans. His crusades against obscenity were coupled by his desire to be declared ‘the commander of the faithful’ (amir-ul-mominin). Instead, he was brought down by a coup in 1999. Unlike the coup against the Bhutto regime which was planed by a reactionary general, the one against Nawaz (by General Musharraf) was apparently staged to fix the economy and roll back the influence that the Islamists had enjoyed, especially during the Zia and Nawaz regimes.

Khan’s party initially supported the coup against Nawaz. But it pulled back its support when the PTI was routed in the 2002 elections. Khan began criticising Musharraf as an “American stooge” and “fake liberal.” Musharraf responded by claiming that Khan had asked him that he be made the prime minister. Musharraf then added that Khan’s ideas were “like those of a mullah.” One wonders whether this statement had annoyed Khan or delighted him. Because remember, he was trying his best to bury his glitzy past and convince everyone that he was now a pious gentleman who wanted to employ ‘true Islamic principles’ in the country’s politics and polity.

---

But weren’t many of these ‘principles’ already made part of the country’s constitution and penal code by the likes of ZA Bhutto, Zia and Nawaz?

From 1974 onwards, Pakistan started to become what the Canadian political scientist Ran Hirschl described as a “constitutional theocracy.” The phrase was initially coined by the French political scientist Oliver Roy for Iran’s post-revolution constitution. Hirschl expanded it in a 2010 book in which he studied the increasing Islamisation of constitutions in certain Muslim countries, and the problems these constitutions were facing in coming to terms with various contemporary political, legislative and social challenges.

Constitutional theocracies empower the Islamists even if they are a minority in the Parliament. This is quite apparent in Pakistan. According to Syed Adnan Hussain, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Saint Mary’s University, even though most Islamists scoff at democracy, there were also some prominent Islamist ideologues who posited that constitutions, judicial review, legal codes and a form of democratic election could be integrated into an Islamic state. Abul Ala Maududi and Maulana Taqi Usmani were two such ideologues. They agreed to use whatever means were available to turn Pakistan into an Islamic state. And these included democratic institutions, processes and the constitution.

Involvement of the ulema in drafting the 1956 constitution was nominal, even though the constitution did declare the country an Islamic republic. Their contribution in drafting the 1962 constitution was extremely minimal. And even though, there were just 18 members of various Islamist parties in the National Assembly which came into being after 1971, their input increased during the drafting of the 1973 constitution. Their influence continued to grow. By 1991, the constitution had been greatly Islamised.

Therefore, even the more electorally strong non-Islamist parties have had to add various Islamist ideas in their armoury because as the American author Shadi Hamid wrote: “Private religious devotion (to Islamists) is inseparable from political action. Islam is to be applied in daily life, including in the public realm. And to fail to do so is to shirk one’s obligations towards God. Faith, or at least their faith, gives (the Islamists) a built-in political advantage.” It is this advantage that the non-Islamist politicians want to usurp. They frequently find themselves pressed to continue positioning themselves as equally pious champions of Islam. Khan is doing exactly that. Bhutto did so in the second half of his rule, and Nawaz during his second stint as PM. But, of course, this does not come naturally to non-Islamists. And the Islamists are never convinced. In fact, they see it as a way by non-Islamists to neutralise the political influence of the Islamists. Yet, in times of crisis, many non-Islamist heads of government in the country have curiously leaned towards religion, believing that by adopting an ‘Islamic’ demeanour, they would be able to pacify public anger towards their failing regimes.

This can be a desperate and last-ditch ploy to survive a fall. But on occasion, it can also be about a personal existentialist crisis – which makes it even worse. I believe Khan is a case in point. Indeed, there is an element of political amorality in his increasingly fervent moral rhetoric and religious exhibitionism. According to the British journalist and documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis, as the world continues to become more complicated than ever, political leaders are increasingly struggling to comprehend today’s complexities and, thus, failing to formulate and provide a coherent vision of the future. They are attempting to define the complexity of today’s realities in an overtly simple manner.

Driven by a demand to simplify modern-day complexities, the leaderships, instead of trying to figure out new ways forward, have begun to look backwards, promising to bring forth a past that was apparently better and less complicated. But the recollection of such pasts is often not very accurate, because it involves a nostalgia which is referred to as ‘Anemoia’, or a nostalgia for a time one has never known. A past that is not a lived experience. A past that is largely imagined.

Khan likes to talk about the 7th-century state in Madinah. But as the anthropologist Irfan Ahmad and the historian Patricia Crone have demonstrated, there was no clear concept of a state anywhere in pre-modern times, east or west. The idea of the state as we know it today, began to emerge after the 17th century and matured from the 19th century onwards. It is a European concept. What is more, according to Ahmad, the idea of an Islamic state is a 20th century construct. It is derived from an imagined memory. Pre-modern states were vastly different than what they became from the 19th century onwards. States in pre-modern times had extremely limited capacity or resources to regulate every aspect of life.

They were impersonal and mostly erected to collect taxes from the subjects so that landed elites and monarchs could sustain standing armies, mount their wars, and retain power. A majority of the subjects were left to their own devices, as long as they did not rebel. Conquered areas were mostly put in the hands of local leaders on the condition that they would remain loyal to the conquers. Ancient states in Muslim regions and in the regions that the Muslims conquered were no different. But 20th-century Islamic ideologues began to speak of creating Islamic states. According to Ahmad, the idea of an Islamic state was the result of how the concept of the modern state had begun to fascinate ideologues and politicians in India.

The Congress began to talk about an Indian state, the League began to work towards a Muslim-majority state, the socialists towards a socialist state, and Islamists like Maududi began musing about an Islamic state. Shabir Usmani and Maududi projected the idea and reality of an all-encompassing modern state as a way to explain the functions of the 7th-century Madinah state, as if it had functioned like a modern state, regulating the lives of its subjects with coded laws, interventions, constitutions and through other established state institutions. This was not the case. What is more, there was little or no scholarship in the premodern Muslim world on political ideas or philosophy. These would only begin to appear in the 14th century in the works of Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun.

PM Khan is thus dealing in anemoia. He, like 20th-century critics of modernity, is raging against its supposedly cold and mechanical disposition. But instead of offering something new, he is investing more effort in trying to revive romanticised pasts which did not exist in the shape that they are often remembered as. Khan’s failure and incompetence to address the mounting problems of the here and the now, and his insistence on creating a theocratic potpourri of schemes already exhausted by Islamist ideologues – and by heads of state and government such as Bhutto, Zia and Nawaz – may as well be the last nail in the coffin of a much-exploited idea that is almost entirely based on a politically motivated and largely imagined memory.

Who is afraid of Hindutva?

How do I deal with deep rooted fear?

J Krishnamurti

Analysts caught off guard by 41% Capita share drop

Cat Rutter Pooley in The Financial Times

There may be some red-faced analysts across the City this morning. 

Only two out of 16 analysts polled by Bloomberg had a sell rating on Capita before today, when its shares plummeted 41 per cent on a profit warning and planned £700m rights issue. 

Of the rest, 11 had a hold rating and three a buy rating. 

One of those buy recommendations came from Numis, which issued its note on the company two weeks ago. 

Then, Numis described a meeting with the new Capita chief executive as “positive”, noting that: 

 It is easy to be critical of the past, but his observations on some of the structural and cultural issues at Capita highlighted some fundamental problems, but also material opportunities. We were encouraged by [Jonathan Lewis’s] comments on the need for great focus, cost reductions (whilst also re-investing for growth), and need to focus on cash. 

Numis declined to comment immediately on whether it was reviewing the recommendation in light of the company’s update. 

Jefferies, which has also had a ‘buy’ recommendation on the stock, characterised Wednesday’s announcement as a “kitchen sinking”, or effort to cram all the bad news out at once. The revelations could generate a 40 per cent decline in earnings expectations for the full year, it said, adding that the revenue environment remained “lacklustre”. 

Shares are current trading around 210p, down 40 per cent. 

Meanwhile, the ripples from Capita’s share price drop are leaking across the outsourcing industry. Serco slipped 3 per cent, and Mitie was down 2.4 per cent at pixel time.

Is James Andersen an Alan Sked of English cricket?

Girish Menon

You might wonder what is the relationship between James Andersen the cricketer and Dr. Alan Sked the original founder of the UK Independence Party (UKIP)?  Prima facie, not a lot; one is a cricketer with not much connection with academia and the other is a tenured historian at the London School of Economics. But look closer and you can find both of them living in the past.

I attended Dr. Sked’s history lectures many moons ago. He was a fine orator and I fondly remember him after so many years, His pet theme was the greatness of the British Empire and the downward spiral of the UK since World War II especially with the increasing integration of erstwhile enemies into the European Union. At one of our social do’s we had the following conversation:

‘Alan, the UK needs a clock that rotates backwards’

‘Why?’ he asked

‘Because you seem to be forever living in the past’

‘Girish, do you know who you are talking to? I will be marking your papers in the summer’

‘Alan I am not from colonial India, I am from a more confident India’….

I had been out of touch with Dr. Sked until his proposal to start a UKIP of the left – however this proposal did not see the light of day at least not in the form Dr. Sked envisaged. Today's early morning reverie however linked Dr. Sked with James Andersen a great English bowler. Andersen, whose career appears fast fading, criticised the Indian captain Virat Kohli on the day he scored 235 runs. Kohli’s over 600 runs in four test matches has Andersen unimpressed. He suggested that Kohli is not so much an improved batsman, as a batsman playing in conditions that do not exploit his "technical deficiencies".

"I'm not sure he's changed," Anderson said. "I just think any technical deficiencies he's got aren't in play out here. The wickets just take that out of the equation.

"We had success against him in England, but the pace of the pitches over here just take any flaws he has out of the equation. There's not that pace in the wicket to get the nicks, like we did against him in England with a bit more movement. Pitches like this suit him down to the ground.”

"When that's not there, he's very much suited to playing in these conditions. He's a very good player of spin and if you're not bang on the money and don't take your chances, he'll punish you. We tried to stay patient against him, but he just waits and waits and waits. He just played really well."

Andersen, like Dr. Sked, loves to invoke the past when he does not wish to deal with the current reality. Virat Kohli may indeed fail on his next trip to England in 2018 on England’s doctored pitches. But Andersen could be a little less churlish, live in the present and share some of the Yuletide spirit.

How Little do Experts Know- On Ranieri and Leicester, One Media Expert Apologises

In July of last year I may have written an article suggesting that the Italian was likely to get Leicester City relegated from the Premier League

 

Leicester City manager Claudio Ranieri lifts the Premier League trophy. Photograph: Carl Recine/Reuters


Marcus Christenson in The Guardian


No one likes to be wrong. It is much nicer to be right. In life, however, it is not possible to be right all the time. We all try our best but there are times when things go horribly wrong.
I should know. In July last year I sat down to write an article about Claudio Ranieri. The 63-year-old had just been appointed the new manager of Leicester City and I decided, in the capacity of being the football editor at the Guardian, that I was the right person to write that piece.

Claudio Ranieri: the anti-Pearson … and the wrong man for Leicester City?



I made that decision based on the following: I have lived and worked as a journalist in Italy and have followed Ranieri’s career fairly closely since his early days in management. I also made sure that I spoke to several people in Greece, where Ranieri’s last job before replacing Nigel Pearson at Leicester, had ended in disaster with the team losing against the Faroe Islands and the manager getting sacked.

It was quite clear to me that this was a huge gamble by Leicester and that it was unlikely to end well. And I was hardly the only one to be sceptical. Gary Lineker, the former Leicester striker and now Match of the Day presenter, tweeted “Claudio Ranieri? Really?” and followed it up with by saying: “Claudio Ranieri is clearly experienced, but this is an uninspired choice by Leicester. It’s amazing how the same old names keep getting a go on the managerial merry-go-round.”

I started my article by explaining what had gone wrong in Greece (which was several things) before moving on to talk about the rest of his long managerial career, pointing out that he had never won a league title in any country and nor had he stayed at any club for more than two seasons since being charge at Chelsea at the beginning of the 2000s.

I threw in some light-hearted “lines”, such as the fact that he was the manager in charge of Juventus when they signed Christian Poulsen (not really a Juventus kind of player) and proclaimed that the appointment was “baffling”.

I added: “In some ways, it seems as if the Leicester owners went looking for the anti-Nigel Pearson. Ranieri is not going to call a journalist an ostrich. He is not going to throttle a player during a match. He is not going to tell a supporter to ‘fuck off and die’, no matter how bad the abuse gets.”

Claudio Ranieri instructs his players during Greece’s defeat by the Faroe Islands, the Italian’s last game in charge of the Euro 2004 winners. Photograph: Thanassis Stavrakis/AP

Rather pleased with myself – thinking that I was giving the readers a good insight to the man and the manager – I also put a headline on the piece, which read: “Claudio Ranieri: the anti-Pearson … and the wrong man for Leicester City?”

I did not think much more of the piece until a few months later when Leicester were top of the league and showing all the signs of being capable of staying there.

After a while, the tweets started to appear from people pointing out that I may not have called this one right. As the season wore on, these tweets became more and more frequent, and they have been sent to me after every Leicester win since the turn of the year.

At some point in February I decided to go back and look at the piece again. It made for uncomfortable reading. I had said that describing his spell in charge of Greece as “poor” would be an understatement. I wrote that 11 years after being given the nickname “Tinkerman” because he changed his starting XI so often when in charge of Chelsea, he was still an incorrigible “Tinkerman”.

It gets worse. “Few will back him to succeed but one thing is for sure: he will conduct himself in an honourable and humble way, as he always has done,” the articles said. “If Leicester wanted someone nice, they’ve got him. If they wanted someone to keep them in the Premier League, then they may have gone for the wrong guy.”

Ouch. Reading it back again I was faced with a couple of uncomfortable questions, the key one being “who do you think you are, writing such an snobbish piece about a dignified man and a good manager?”

The second question was a bit easier to answer. Was this as bad as the “In defence of Nicklas Bendtner” article I wrote a couple of years ago? (The answer is “no”, by the way, few things come close to an error of judgment of that scale).

I would like to point out a few things though. I did get – as a very kind colleague pointed out – 50% of that last paragraph right. He clearly is a wonderful human being and when Paolo Bandini spoke to several of his former players recently one thing stood out: the incredible affection they still feel for this gentle 64-year-old.

All in all, though, there is no point defending the indefensible: I could not have got it more wrong.


At the start of this piece I said that no one likes to be wrong. Well, I was wrong about that too. I’ve enjoyed every minute of being embarrassingly wrong this season. Leicester is the best story that could have happened to football in this country, their triumph giving hope to all of us who want to start a season dreaming that something unthinkable might happen.

So thank you Leicester and thank you Claudio, it’s been quite wonderful.

A CV of failure shows not every venture has a happy ending – and that’s OK

Julian Baggini in The Guardian


 

‘JK Rowling was a single mother on benefits, but others talked this up into a rags to riches fairy story.’ Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian


In my memory box I have a fine collection of rejection letters from editors and agents unimpressed with my first attempt at a book. Unsurprisingly, these mementoes of failure are the odd ones out in a collection that generally catalogues the highs rather than the lows of my life. We do not generally keep pictures of ex-partners from disastrous relationships on our mantelpieces, or photos of our sullen selves trapped inside a rain-swept, half-built motel.

But according to Princeton psychology professor Johannes Haushofer, we should do more to remember our failures. He has tweeted a CV of his setbacks, including lists of degree programmes he did not get into; papers that were rejected by journals; and academic positions, research funding and fellowships he did not get. Ironically, this little stunt has been a huge hit. “This darn CV of Failures has received way more attention that my entire body of academic work,” he said. Expect a TED talk and book to follow.

CV of failures: Princeton professor publishes résumé of his career lows


But the irony runs deeper. Haushofer probably would not have paraded his failures in the first place if he were not now a high-flying Princeton professor. Admitting to past defeats is easy if ultimately you have emerged the victor.

Haushofer’s confession has been praised as a breath of fresh air, a brave display of honesty. But sharing our past trials and tribulations is mainstream, not radical. No success story is complete without the chapter about overcoming adversity. Indeed, I often suspect that many people exaggerate their earlier problems in order to fit this standard narrative and if they don’t, others will do it for them. JK Rowling was a single mother on benefits, but others talked this up into a “rags to riches” fairy story. She has explicitly denied that she ever wrote in cafes to escape from an unheated flat, a story that never made much sense, given the price of a cappuccino in Edinburgh.

It is much harder to, if not celebrate, at least embrace failures when they are more than temporary setbacks. Would Hausfhofer have shared his list of rejections had they not been followed by acceptances? If so, he is braver and more honest than most. Increasingly our culture peddles the myth that with enough belief, determination, and perhaps even hard work, you can achieve anything you want. So if you do terminally fail, that can only mean that you have not tried, believed, or worked enough.

This is pernicious nonsense. The harder truth to accept is that success is never guaranteed. Luck plays its part, but there is also the simple fact that we do not know what we can achieve until we try. Success requires a happy coincidence of talent, effort and fortune, so if you try to do anything of any ambition, the possibility of failure is ever present. When our plans fail, there is no reason to think that necessarily reveals a deep failure in ourselves.

I’m not sure what I was thinking when I saved all those rejection letters. At the time, I didn’t know whether they would record mere setbacks or a thwarted ambition. But either way, they would have served a purpose. Had I not go on to have a writing career, they would have reminded me that I did at least try and that the reason I did not succeed was not for want of effort. That reminder would be sobering and humbling, which is why it would have been so valuable. If we are to go to our graves at peace with ourselves, we must be able to accept our disappointments and limitations as well as our successes.

Since I have gone on to earn my living by writing, I could wrongly take them to be proof of how my refusal to take no for an answer ensured that my talents were eventually recognised. The more honest way to see them is as evidence of how fortunate I was that eventually someone chose to take a punt on me.

In Hollywood, every failure simply serves to make the eventual success more inevitable. In real life, every past failure should be a reminder that a happy outcome was never guaranteed. Our failed relationships, terrible jobs and bad holidays reflect our characters and the reality of our lives at least as much as the good times, which often hang on a thread. Thinking more about our failures might just help us to be more grateful for the successes we enjoy and kinder to ourselves when, more often, they elude us.

Don’t ignore the saner voices of moderate Muslims

SA Aiyar in The Times of India

There is much in common between those who hit Paris last week and Mumbai on 26/11. Let nobody pretend, like elements of the left, that Paris was just revenge against Western imperialism. ISIS aims to become the biggest imperialist of all, re-creating the ancient Islamic empire from Portugal to China. The Ottoman caliphate once came close to conquering the whole of Europe, and ISIS would like to finish the job. It claims a divine right to kill those who come in the way — Arabs, Jews, Americans, Europeans, Indians or anyone else.

UP home minister Azam Khan outraged many by making excuses for the Paris killings. He said this was a reaction to the actions of global superpowers like America and Russia. “History will decide who is the terrorist. Killing innocents whether in Syria or Paris is a highly deplorable act… But if you created such a situation, you have to face the backlash too.”

This determination to justify the attack, while grudgingly condemning it, is hypocritical communalism. It has parallels with the grudging criticism by BJP leaders of the lynching of the Dadri Muslim accused of eating beef. Tarun Vijay wrote that the lynching would indeed be terrible if it turned out that he had only eaten mutton. Culture minister Mahesh Sharma claims it was just “an accident.” Former MLA Nawab Singh Nagar said those who dared hurt the feelings of the dominant Thakurs should realize the consequences, and claimed that the murderous mob consisted of “innocent children” below 15 years of age. Srichand Sharma said violence was inevitable if Muslims disrespected Hindu sentiments.

The inability of these BJP leaders to condemn the lynching outright is matched by Azam Khan’s inability to condemn the Paris attackers outright. Communalists cherry-pick events from history to claim they are victims, with the right to vengeful retribution. Sorry, but groups across the world have been both attackers and victims. Through history, imperial conquest, killing and loot was considered great (hence Alexander the Great, or Peter the Great). Modern notions of civil rights, secularism and nationhood did not exist. Might was right, indeed greatness.

And so there were Muslims who conquered and plundered, and other Muslims who were at the receiving end. Christian conquerors created large empires by the sword, and were in turn subjugated by others. Hindu, Chinese, Mongol, Arab and African kings killed and looted for personal aggrandizement, and in turn were killed and looted.

Communalists harp on events in which they were victims, ignoring others where they were victimizers. ISIS and Azam Khan repeat the victimhood theme of Muslims in the 20th century, complaining of being bombed and dominated by the West, and claiming that revenge is both justifiable and inevitable. They are unable to see themselves also as victimizers who slaughtered and looted for centuries, from Portugal to China. Nor will they accept that victims from Portugal to China have a right to revenge.

Right message: Last week’s fatwa against ISIS signed by 1,070 Indian imams and muftis deserved more coverage

A sane, safe society is not possible if every community wants to avenge events of the past. Every community needs to accept that it has been both a victimizer and victim, and leave the past behind. Some communities have succeeded in doing this — notably Germany after World War II — and that has been the basis for civilized progress. The contrast with ISIS could not be greater.

While the media has rightly focused on Azam Khan, they have ignored the much saner response of moderate Muslims. It’s wrong to constantly highlight communal Muslims and downplay nationalist ones.

TOI last Wednesday reported “the biggest fatwa ever” against ISIS, signed by 1,070 Indian imams and muftis. The fatwa, which condemned ISIS categorically as “inhuman” and “un-lslamic”, has been forwarded by Abdur Rahman Anjaria of the Islamic Defence Cybercell to the UN, several foreign governments and the Prime Minister’s Office. Anjaria says the fatwa is the biggest ever initiative by Indian ulema to reject the dangerous ideology of ISIS, which “has disgraced the name of Allah and the Prophet….It is the duty of every Muslim to join the fight to defeat it.”

I think this news should have been on page one in every newspaper. Instead it was hidden in the inside pages of the Times of India. So was another small report on a protest meeting in Delhi by the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, to condemn the strikes in Paris, Turkey and Lebanon in the name of Islam. Without naming Azam Khan, its general secretary, Maulana Madani, said “We completely dismiss the action-reaction theory propounded by some persons.”

Prime Minister Modi needs to highlight and cite such moderate views. It’s not enough to say India needs social harmony. It’s also necessary to give kudos to those who promote that moderation.

Is it time to rewrite the laws of physics?

By Tom Chivers in The Telegraph  

'Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so,” said Ford Prefect in Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. For the past century, mainstream physics has agreed with him. To most of us, it seems obvious that the world is moving steadily forward through time, from a known past, through an active present, into a mysterious future. But, as Einstein said, “physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one”.

“Mainstream physics basically eliminates time as a fundamental aspect of nature,” explains Prof Lee Smolin, a physicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, in Ontario, Canada. “It does that in various ways, but the most common is the so-called 'block universe’ picture, which is derived from general relativity.”

Under this system, what is actually real is not our passage through time, but the whole of reality at once. “Imagine taking a movie of your life,” says Prof Smolin, “and laying out the frames on a table, and saying: that is your life. There is no now, there is no change.”

He thinks that it is high time – so to speak – this view was overturned. In his new book Time Reborn, he makes the case that time is a fundamental reality of the universe, and that without it, too many of the big questions of physics are left unanswerable.

The question of what time is, and whether it is real or illusory, is an ancient one. Even before Plato, Greek philosophers were debating whether, as Heraclitus said, you cannot step in the same river twice, that all is flux and change, or whether Parmenides was right and that change is an illusion, that the universe simply exists as an unchanging lump.

The first person to address the issue in depth, according to Dr Julian Barbour, author of The End of Time, was St Augustine. He was baffled by it, and said as much. “What then is time?” Augustine wrote. “If no one asks of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not.” Still, he did make an attempt to explain it, coming to the surprisingly modern conclusion that there could not have been time before the world, because there would have been no change, and without change, time is meaningless.

Sir Isaac Newton, a thousand years later, disagreed. He held the common-sense view – instinctively shared by the rest of us – that time is absolute, marching on regardless of the doings of the stuff of the universe. It was Einstein who showed that it was no such thing. According to his theories of relativity, time and space are part of an interwoven fabric: the presence of matter changes both, stretching the fabric like a weight on a sheet.

His theories are counterintuitive – arguing that someone who is travelling ages slower than someone who is standing still, and that time goes faster the further we get from the surface of the Earth – but at least, in his universe, there is such a thing as time.

“Einstein, in a way, makes time something real – with the idea of space-time, he makes it as real as space,” says Dr Barbour. But there is a fundamental difference, which leads us to one of the great problems with our concept of time: “We get the impression that we are always moving through time, when we can perfectly happily sit still and have no impression that we are moving through space. That’s a very big mystery, because the laws of physics work exactly the same way whether you run them forwards or backwards.”

Clearly, that is not how we perceive the world. We see babies be born, grow old and die; water flowing downhill; and wood burning to ash. “If you drop an egg on the floor, it breaks, and there is no way you can put that egg back together again,” says Dr Barbour.

This is due to a property called entropy, or disorder. The second law of thermodynamics dictates that the universe will move from ordered, low-entropy states to disordered, high-entropy states: ice will melt and coffee will cool, until everything is the same temperature, and everything is mixed together in an undifferentiated mass. “According to the fundamental laws of physics as we know them, it shouldn’t make any difference which way you look at them. And yet it is clearly the case that entropy increases,” Dr Barbour says.

That leaves an awful lot of questions unanswered – which is where Prof Smolin’s ideas come in. “The second law dictates that any system in disequilibrium should come quickly to equilibrium,” he points out. “But our universe, even though it’s more than 13 billion years old, is very far from equilibrium.”

This is due to particular facts about the laws of physics – such as the strength of gravity, or the precise set of particles we observe – and the very specific way that the universe began. But Prof Smolin points out that we still do not know why those laws are as they are, or why the universe should have started in its particular way: “There seems to be no simple principle that picks out the standard model of particle physics from a vast number of equally likely possibilities.” Uncountable billions of other universes could have existed in which there would be no stars, no planets, and no us.

Prof Smolin’s point is that, for modern physics, in which time is treated as an illusion, this question is unanswerable. “The initial conditions and laws, in the block universe model, are just part of the universe. It would be like asking a computer to explain the program it’s running.” But if we treat the laws as things that could have been different had history gone differently, or that can change with time, “then time has to exist prior to those laws, and then it has to be real in a way that the block universe doesn’t allow”.

There is a risk with much of theoretical physics that it strays into a realm of philosophy, away from the science of experiment and reality. Prof Smolin insists that this is not the case: his idea of “real time” includes hypotheses that make testable predictions. One such experiment might be to use quantum computers, which, in theory, will be able to detect the evolution of physical laws. Dr Barbour (whose book tends to support the time-is-an-illusion school of thought), says that observations of astronomical phenomena called gamma-ray bursts might also show violations of Einstein’s laws at the universe’s smallest scale – although so far, he says, they have proved remarkably robust.

If Prof Smolin is right, he believes that it will have implications far beyond academic physics. “A lot of our thinking about many things, from the nature of being human to political and environmental problems, are poisoned by the belief that the future is already determined and that we can’t find truly novel solutions,” he says. “For example, in economics, the insistence that the laws are formalised in a timeless mathematical setting, like Newtonian physics, leads to some incorrect ideas, which helped contribute to the economic disaster of 2008.” A model of the world in which “the future is open, and the universe can discover novel structures, novel ideas, creates a very different idea of our possibilities” – and could lead to some very different thinking.

Whether he’s right or not, only time itself will tell. Certainly, physics has done away with the concept of time for so long that simply saying that it is real feels almost revolutionary.

Having 10 ex-lovers is the ideal number

By Cristina Odone

8:44PM BST 06 Sep 2012

It’s a crucial scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral, and for my money ranks with Meg Ryan faking an orgasm in When Harry Met Sally. Hugh Grant’s character, looking like the uncomfortable, repressed Englishman he is, fidgets and squirms at a table in a café as the upfront American he’s fallen for, played by Andie MacDowell, merrily lists her previous lovers.

There were various rolls in the hay (she was a country girl). One paramour had a hairy back. Another was a “shock”. There was a “disappointing” one and another, “who broke my heart”. Number 22 kept falling asleep (“that was my first year in England”). Number 27 was a mistake (“he kept screaming”); 28 was Spencer; 29, his father; 32 was lovely… and then there is the man she is about to marry.

That’s 33 lovers. “Not as many as Madonna,” she points out. But a great deal more than anyone should admit to – at least to a prospective partner. This is not my prudish hunch, but the very scientific finding of SeekingArrangement.com. The dating website asked 1,000 clients to name the perfect number of ex-lovers anyone should have, and the answer, from both males and females, was 10. Any more, claim the respondents to the survey, would be promiscuous; any less would betray an inexperienced fumbler, or a repressed loner.

So 10 it is, and I can see why. Nine lovers will have ironed out a person’s little idiosyncrasies, like popping in his mouth guard (“so I don’t forget”) before the first fumble. By number 10, she will have learned not to offer a running commentary during rumpy-pumpy. After 10 lovers, paranoia about one’s naked body disappears, and chatting to the opposite sex no longer unnerves. With any luck, out of 10 lovers, at least one will be great and inspire confidence in oneself – and thus in relationships.

By the tenth “friend”, even the most overprotective parents won’t pose questions like “are your intentions honourable?”. By then, too, nosy friends will have stopped studying each new candidate for sinister perversions or bunny-boiling tendencies. Ten previous lovers suggests a person is neither a commitment-phobe nor a desperado ready to hitch up with the first person who’ll have them. 

If 10 has been deemed a good rule of thumb when it comes to admitting to past lovers, I should point out that some of us would rather die than discuss (let alone list) our exes with our present partner. It was a lesson that girls learnt at finishing school, like getting out of a sports car without showing too much leg. Bad girls did, and talked about it; good girls did, and kept mum. These charm schools did not wish to promote goody-goody Victorian morality, they just wanted to maximise students’ chances of bagging an eligible bachelor: numerous exes would intimidate, but secrets would titillate the chinless wonder with a country pile but without a clue.

Mary Killen, The Spectator’s agony aunt and queen of etiquette, thoroughly approves of such discretion. “Who wants their friends or strangers imagining them having 10, or any number, of couplings? Mystery is always best. Once graphic details, or even numbers, have been spelt out, they can never be forgotten.”

True, but in today’s confessional culture, reticence is worse than a hairy back. Health and safety are as much a part of sexual etiquette as they are of employment regulations. With the rise of internet dating, sexually transmitted diseases such as chlamydia and chilling reports of jealous rows ending in murder, a secret past is a turn-off.

Suddenly, making inquiries about a suitor’s romantic history is part of every courtship, as awkward but unavoidable as the moment when the bill arrives, and you don’t know whether to reach for your purse: are you going Dutch or do you risk offending him by intimating that he can’t afford to keep you in style?

“How many have you had?” is no longer a lubricious question but a legitimate one. Some men, of course, don’t need this excuse to divulge how many notches they’ve chalked up on their bedposts. Casanova, the notorious 18th-century ladies’ man, boasted more than 200 conquests. Mozart’s Don Juan turned his long catalogue of seductions into a delightful aria. And Warren Beatty’s biography claims that the Hollywood heart-throb managed to bed 12,775 women. More recently, we’ve had the 69-year-old Tony Blackburn admitting to 500 women, while Bill Roache – Coronation Street’s Ken Barlow – claims to have had over a thousand.

In comparison, Nick Clegg, who famously confessed to having slept with “no more than 30” women, sounds positively virginal – if not a little “vulgar”, as Matt Warren, editor of The Lady, puts it. “Going public with the number of lovers you’ve had is unforgivable.”

Especially, I’d venture, if you’re a politician. I can no more dissociate Clegg from his 30 lovers than Gladstone from his prostitutes, or Berlusconi from his glamour models. Knowing about the Deputy PM’s bunga-bunga past dents his dignity. Frisky Nick is a lot less authoritative than devoted (if henpecked) father-figure Nick.

Clegg’s full disclosure did prompt many a dinner-party game among Westminster-watchers: which MP has had the most lovers? (Readers’ answers welcome.) Some argue that a “colourful” past is a plus in parliamentarians, showing that they have a wide variety of experience.

Indeed, the liaisons of such MPs as Alan Clark, Jonathan Aitken and Mike Hancock (who fell for an alleged Russian spy) – to name just a few – are well documented. Flesh-peddling is part of the job, after all; and a scattergun approach to frolicking is, perhaps, understandable, given that Westminster allows all the emotional intimacy of a Moonie marriage ceremony. Others counter that politicians who have over-extended themselves on the sexual front in the past become more vulnerable to humiliation (or blackmail) should a bitter and twisted ex decide to wreak revenge.

For even among phlegmatic Anglo-Saxons, jealousy of the ex should not be underestimated. This cuts both ways. I know couples who are so insistent about keeping their sexual past a no-go area that their current partner suspects a former lover in every friend and at every party. All encounters have the potential for sulks, inquisitions and rows.

On the other hand, admission of a particular number of exes can lead to questions about dates, names and – yikes – rankings. For these obsessives, there is no right number of ex-lovers: 10 is as intolerable as 1,000, and as offensive as “mind your own business”.

Perhaps it is best to accept Matt Warren’s advice, which is that “there should be no upper or lower limit to the number of lovers one can admit to; that would be too prescriptive. The essential thing is the state of your current relationship. And if your partner does ask, bear in mind how the information you share will affect them.”

In other words, lie.

Moral decay? Family life's the best it's been for 1,000 years

Conservatives' concerns about marriage seem to be based on a past that is fabricated from their own anxieties and obsessions


George Monbiot

guardian.co.uk, Monday 14 May 2012 20.30 BST 


'Throughout history and in virtually all human societies marriage has always been the union of a man and a woman." So says the Coalition for Marriage, whose petition against same-sex unions in the UK has so far attracted 500,000 signatures. It's a familiar claim, and it is wrong. Dozens of societies, across many centuries, have recognised same-sex marriage. In a few cases, before the 14th century, it was even celebrated in church.



This is an example of a widespread phenomenon: myth-making by cultural conservatives about past relationships. Scarcely challenged, family values campaigners have been able to construct a history that is almost entirely false.



The unbiblical and ahistorical nature of the modern Christian cult of the nuclear family is a marvel rare to behold. Those who promote it are followers of a man born out of wedlock and allegedly sired by someone other than his mother's partner. Jesus insisted that "if any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters … he cannot be my disciple". He issued no such injunction against homosexuality: the threat he perceived was heterosexual and familial love, which competed with the love of God.



This theme was aggressively pursued by the church for some 1,500 years. In his classic book A World of Their Own Making, Professor John Gillis points out that until the Reformation, the state of holiness was not matrimony but lifelong chastity. There were no married saints in the early medieval church. Godly families in this world were established not by men and women, united in bestial matrimony, but by the holy orders, whose members were the brothers or brides of Christ. Like most monotheistic religions (which developed among nomadic peoples), Christianity placed little value on the home. A Christian's true home belonged to another realm, and until he reached it, through death, he was considered an exile from the family of God.



The Reformation preachers created a new ideal of social organisation – the godly household – but this bore little relationship to the nuclear family. By their mid-teens, often much earlier, Gillis tells us, "virtually all young people lived and worked in another dwelling for shorter or longer periods". Across much of Europe, the majority belonged – as servants, apprentices and labourers – to houses other than those of their biological parents. The poor, by and large, did not form households; they joined them.



The father of the house, who described and treated his charges as his children, typically was unrelated to most of them. Family, prior to the 19th century, meant everyone who lived in the house. What the Reformation sanctified was the proto-industrial labour force, working and sleeping under one roof.



The belief that sex outside marriage was rare in previous centuries is also unfounded. The majority, who were too poor to marry formally, Gillis writes, "could love as they liked as long as they were discreet about it". Before the 19th century, those who intended to marry began to sleep together as soon as they had made their spousals (declared their intentions). This practice was sanctioned on the grounds that it allowed couples to discover whether or not they were compatible. If they were not, they could break it off. Premarital pregnancy was common and often uncontroversial, as long as provision was made for the children.



The nuclear family, as idealised today, was an invention of the Victorians, but it bore little relationship to the family life we are told to emulate. Its development was driven by economic rather than spiritual needs, as the industrial revolution made manufacturing in the household unviable. Much as the Victorians might extol their families, "it was simply assumed that men would have their extramarital affairs and women would also find intimacy, even passion, outside marriage" (often with other women). Gillis links the 20th-century attempt to find intimacy and passion only within marriage, and the impossible expectations this raises, to the rise in the rate of divorce.



Children's lives were characteristically wretched: farmed out to wet nurses, sometimes put to work in factories and mines, beaten, neglected, often abandoned as infants. In his book A History of Childhood, Colin Heywood reports that "the scale of abandonment in certain towns was simply staggering", reaching one third or a half of all the children born in some European cities. Street gangs of feral youths caused as much moral panic in late 19th-century England as they do today.



Conservatives often hark back to the golden age of the 1950s. But in the 1950s, John Gillis shows, people of the same persuasion believed they had suffered a great moral decline since the early 20th century. In the early 20th century, people fetishised the family lives of the Victorians. The Victorians invented this nostalgia, looking back with longing to imagined family lives before the industrial revolution.



In the Daily Telegraph today Cristina Odone maintained that "anyone who wants to improve lives in this country knows that the traditional family is key". But the tradition she invokes is imaginary. Far from this being, as cultural conservatives assert, a period of unique moral depravity, family life and the raising of children is, for most people, now surely better in the west than at any time in the past 1,000 years.



The conservatives' supposedly moral concerns turn out to be nothing but an example of the age-old custom of first idealising and then sanctifying one's own culture. The past they invoke is fabricated from their own anxieties and obsessions. It has nothing to offer us.