The Muslim Ummah have abandoned the Rohingyas

by Girish Menon

While the Rohingyas starve, live in fenced in camps or are on boats in high seas with no country willing to accommodate them the Islamic organisations are loudly quiet in their response while western human rights organisations as well as Jewish holocaust survivors espouse their cause. So what happened to the universal brotherhood of Islam? Why don't they offer refuge to their fellow brethren?

The Rohingyas were used by the British during the second world war as a fifth column to defeat the Japanese in Burma. Towards this end they were resettled in the Arakan area of Burma, given arms, money and training by the Allied forces. After the British withdrew from the area and new countries like East Pakistan was created, the Arakan province was to become a part of Burma. At this time the Rohingyas started a jihad against the Burmese government to get their territories to be a part of Jinnah's East Pakistan. Many Islamist organisations were active in this jihad.

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At the time the Rohingyas used the 'dar-ul-harb' concept to refuse to integrate with the Burmese population where they were in a minority. Like their Muslim brethren in the northern plains of India they did not wish to live in a country where they were in a minority. They were actively supported in this jihad by Islamic organisations in Pakistan.

The Burmese, unlike the Indians, when they defined their citizenship laws were unwilling to accommodate this group with a separatist and jihadist motive and the Rohingyas were deemed stateless. So, from then on the only way out for the Rohingyas was to pay smugglers to get them out of the Arakan province into countries where they could lead a decent life.

So why are the Islamist countries not going the extra mile to help their brethren? Why is Pakistan (The holy land for the pure) not inviting these Rohingyas to resettle them in their lands? Why is the Islamic State not taking them to Iraq or Syria nor the al Qaeda making attempts to rescue them? Can we say that NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) supersedes the Islamic Brotherhood?

Why Virat Kohli has to rid Indian cricket of bad habits

Suresh Menon on BBC website

In cricket, as in any sport, there are two kinds of mistakes.

The bad mistake arises out of confused thinking, lack of focus and a poor understanding of tactics. The good mistake, on the other hand, implies a well-thought out plan gone wrong or an attempt to force the issue backfiring.

Increasingly as his captaincy progressed, India's most experienced and successful Test captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni kept making bad mistakes. Giving his bowlers one-over spells, for instance. Or wasting a fielder at leg gully.

Good fortune and hunches can take you only so far - every captain in the game's history has taken chances with an inexplicable bowling change or an illogical batting line-up and surprised everybody by winning. But that cannot be the basis for captaincy.

Positive attitude

Virat Kohli, at 26, younger than Dhoni by seven years, is not yet tactically sound but has two important things going for him: a positive attitude and enormous self-belief.

Not since Tiger Pataudi has an Indian captain been willing to risk defeat in the pursuit of victory like Kohli in the December 2014 Adelaide Test against Australia.

The essential difference between the past and future of Indian cricket is that while Dhoni was clearly on his way down, Kohli can only improve.

He will face many of the problems Dhoni did - a poor bowling attack, especially abroad, the pressures of being on the field for beyond 50 overs or a single day, the hope that victories in the shorter format will make up for their absence in Tests.

India had caved in without a fight in 13 of 17 Tests abroad before the last Australian tour. They lost the 14th in Adelaide, where Kohli led for the first time, but the texture of the defeat was different. The Anna Karenina Principle applied. "All happy families are alike," wrote Tolstoy in his novel, "each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Similarly, all victories are alike but defeats are wildly different.

Kohli is younger than Dhoni by seven years

India went down in a blaze of glory, attempting to make 364 runs in a day and coming startlingly close.

Playing for a draw was never an option, said Kohli, perhaps aware that India had the batting to win the Test, but not to draw it. Still, there was promise of a change in the standard narrative. Optimism is infectious, and it is easy to catch it off a captain who is full of it.

Kohli projected that optimism and spirit right from the days when he led India to the Under-19 World Cup win. He was marked out as future captain.

The IPL has a lot to answer for. But in Kohli's case, it actually helped.

Finding a balance

After initially tasting its many enticements, Kohli settled down. In his corner was his team Royal Challengers Bangalore coach Ray Jennings, who told him that the Under-19 triumph would soon be forgotten, and that he would be judged as an adult cricketer. Anil Kumble helped to channelise and focus all that energy. And he was made captain in anticipation of the bigger job to come.

While Kohli's captaincy in the one-day format has been aggressive and focused on winning, in Tests he will have to learn - as his bowlers too will - the virtues of patience and long-term planning.

Indian cricket will have to find a balance between Dhoni's tendency to let things drift and Kohli's impatience with uneventful overs and sessions. There is an element of fishing in the longer format. You put out your bait and wait. Kohli will have to learn the waiting game.

Whether it is a reflection of the times, a consequence of playing too many matches in the shorter formats of the game or a question of temperament, India's cricket is currently characterised by an impatience that makes them perform well below potential.

Bowlers are in a hurry to take wickets or simply run through their overs, batsmen seem to have forgotten how to play session-to-session. Kohli will have to rid the team of bad habits.

While many believe that a captain is only as good as his team, the best ones have inspired their teams to play above themselves. Pataudi for one, Mike Brearley or another.

Kohli's advantage is that he is the best batsman in the side, and there are no immediate candidates for his job. In other words, he will be left alone to develop his full potential as captain, unhampered by the need to constantly watch his back - an occupational hazard with Indian captains of the past.

He has it in him to stamp his name on an era.

How to cohabit (and live to tell the tale): 10 essential commandments

Emma Jane Unsworth in The Guardian

Cohabiting is about accepting each other as human beings with human bodies. As the bumper sticker almost says: “Stuff Happens.” Illustration: Anna Parini

Moving in with someone can do many things for a relationship. It’s a way of ramping up the commitment and lowering living costs. It means you get to enjoy more time in each other’s company while simultaneously doubling your daily shirt-and-sock options. It’s also that thing you often do when you reach a certain point, and, while I’m generally against things we do simply because we feel we should, I can’t deny that sooner or later, in any relationship, I find myself wondering about living together.

I’ve just moved in with a man for the fourth time in 15 years (different men), and there’s a lot I’m going to do differently this time, because there’s a lot I’ve learned. So in the spirit of sharing, I’ve developed the following set of handy rules. Behold, my Ten Commandments for Cohabitation.

1 Thou Shalt Start With A Blank Canvas

As the saying goes, there’s no accounting for taste. That may be true, but it’s important that you both have an equal chance to inflict your aesthetics upon a place. Fair’s fair. It’s not good for your psychology, or the power dynamics of your relationship, to slot yourself around someone else’s stuff and, by proxy, their past. So even if you’re moving into your paramour’s place, gut it, decor-wise, and start from scratch – together. From then on, it’s about negotiation, tolerance and compromise.

Example: my boyfriend likes crows. One time I walked into the bedroom to find a crow cushion on the pillow so realistic that it looked like an actual dead crow. I took a photo to put on Instagram, and then reacted with an almighty shriek.

Compromise: the crow cushion doesn’t go on the bed any more, and we continue to have sex.

2 Thou Shalt Divvy Up The Chores, Somehow

An ex told me that he found tidiness as oppressive as messiness. Nice try, huh. But it’s all too easy to forget whose turn it is to clean the hob and, unless you’ve got a dusting fetish, there’s nothing erotic about Mr Muscle.

If you can possibly afford to, splash out on a cleaner. I’d go so far as to say it’s worth two bottles of wine a fortnight, and that’s not something I would say lightly. The main peril of this, if you’re working class, is guilt – and guilt is even less erotic than Mr Muscle.

3 Thou Shalt Neither Repress Nor Celebrate Thy Bodily Functions

I’m sorry to include this – I know there are recipes in here and you’re halfway through your brunch, but this is a crucial one. Catherine Zeta-Jones once cited the secret to a long-term relationship as “separate bathrooms” (I know, they split – but they’re back together!). Not an option for the non-Hollywood stars among us, alas. But maybe it’s also about accepting each other as human beings with human bodies. As the bumper sticker almost says: “Stuff Happens”.

A friend of mine overshot it when she took her boyfriend of nine months to stay in a luxury shepherd’s hut for a weekend, as a “living together practice run”. I think we can all see where this one is going. The toilet was a funnel, a metre or so from the bed, behind a curtain. They split soon after. Another friend went to the doctor’s with chronic stomachache a few weeks after moving in with her man, only to be told it was because she was repressing wind.

I’m not saying you have to let it all hang and fly loose, but try to relax. Your body, your home, your air space.

4 Thou Shalt Not Steal… Food

My first experience of living with people that I wasn’t related to (and therefore didn’t expect to fight me at the dinner table) was at university. And it was there, within the walls of my student halls in Liverpool, that I learned one of the harshest lessons about non-familial domesticity. One evening, when I returned to the communal kitchen to retrieve my dinner, I found that someone had stolen my jacket potato from the oven. Then I remembered Susan, scurrying past me in the corridor, looking distinctly uncomfortable as she gripped her hoodie around her midriff, looter-like. Of course she denied it. But I knew she was lying.

And yet, after I’d angrily eaten a neat tin of tuna, I found I could let it go. Furthermore, I felt a deep need to go forth and perform the exact opposite of my natural instinct at that point, which was meanness. These days, I fill the fridge and I don’t count my teabags. I expect anything I leave in the freezer to go, and I don’t care. It actually feels nice. Because meanness doesn’t even make you that much less skint, but what it does make you is miserable.

So I’m grateful to that girl now, for what she taught me. No, really. Get in touch, Susan. Or at least send me a potato

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Emma Jane Unsworth: ‘Tell your partner about their bad habits. The ones they don’t know about. Do it tactfully, but for God’s sake, do it soon.’ Photograph: Michael Thomas Jones for the Guardian

5 Thou Shalt Be Open To New Experiences

In a pressure-cooker space with someone, you can discover life-changing things that make you wonder how you survived without them. My former housemate Eden brought RuPaul’s Drag Race into my life, for which I am truly thankful. I introduced my best friend Alison to pesto with pasta when we lived together at university in the late 90s. As she destroyed the entire bowl, she looked and sounded as if she was having an orgasm – maybe she was. We now look on it as a foundation stone of our friendship, and given the fact she eats it at least once a week now, it’s a source of much pride to me that I was able to give her the gift that keeps on giving. We’ll always have pesto.

6 Thou Shalt Allow Each Other A Few Ludicrous Idiosyncrasies

This again boils down to compromise. My mum vigilantly turns off every single plug socket every night before she goes to bed. I think she once saw an episode of Corrie where a dodgy toaster burned down Sally Webster’s kitchen, and it stayed in her mind. She also unplugs the microwave because someone told her the clock uses up a lot of electricity overnight. I’ve tried to explain that this is simply not true, but not even Google can convince her otherwise.

My dad doesn’t seem to mind her frenzied routine. Nor should he. Because you know what? Everyone’s allowed their minor idiosyncrasies. Everyone is allowed to be ludicrous about one thing, once a day. Even the girl I lived with in my early 20s, who couldn’t find her keys one evening and decided to “lock” the front door by pushing it to and wedging the Henry vacuum cleaner behind it. When I came home, I thought we’d been robbed. Then I saw the vacuum cleaner, and realised I just lived with an idiot. But, you know, so did she, some nights.

7 Thou Shalt Not Inflict Animals Upon Your Beloved

Animals can be a deal-breaker. Allergies aside, some people don’t like the idea of furry creatures around things like food and furniture. I love cats. To me, a house without cats in it feels resonantly sad, but not everyone’s the same. I’m still half-convinced my last attempt at romantic cohabitation ended when I got a cat and it took to urinating on the duvet, generally square on the crotch of whoever was in bed. Morning! It materialised that as well as an unpleasant experience, this triggered bad memories for my then boyfriend, who had once lived with a cat called Moon, who’d systematically terrorised him.

But really: never live with anyone who doesn’t like cats. Those people are suspect and, at the very least, social perverts.


My mother turns off every plug socket before she goes to bed, and the microwave. My dad doesn’t mind – and nor should he

8 Thou Shalt Have A TV

And the internet. My most recent housemate and I tried to do without both for a year, in a bid to “be more productive”. We lasted a month, then we got online (mainly for RuPaul’s Drag Race). Books, I hear you cry! What about books? Well, books are all well and good, until you have a hangover. Then you just need something to look at while you sweat and cry for pizza. Entertainment options other than each other are the key to a happy home on those evenings, or days, when you just want to flop. I also recommend a karaoke machine.

9 Thou Shalt Not Assimilate Resentment

The assimilation of resentment is the death of love. Tell your partner about their bad habits. The ones they don’t know about, I mean. Do it tactfully, but for God’s sake, do it soon.

I have a terrible habit of leaving dirty mugs everywhere; something I only discovered after a man I’d been living with moved out and the mugs began to accumulate on the sink, the toilet, cistern, all of the windowsills – until I ran out of mugs and looked around and saw my awful truth. I called my ex and asked whether he thought I had a mug problem. “Oh, that,” he said. “I guess I just got used to picking them up every day.” “You must have hated me a bit for it, though?” I asked. To which he replied: “Well, I guess I sort of got used to the resentment, too.” (Insert Blaring Relationship Countdown Siren, set at T-minus two months.)

10 Thou Shalt Revolutionise The Meaning Of Romance

Cohabitation brings new meaning to what constitutes romantic behaviour, and you must embrace this, because we’re not getting any younger, and life is short, and love is the greatest, wherever you can find it. You’re not dating any more, and some of the more superficial magic might be gone – but there’s a wealth of possibilities by which you can demonstrate passion and kindness within the confines of your new situation.

Before we said we’d move in together, my boyfriend was staying at my flat and I gave him my keys for the day while I went out to work. My keys were a daily source of woe – identical Yales for a two-lock door; the great Law of Sod meaning I invariably tried the wrong key first, and would stand there, jangling and cursing and disturbing the neighbours. When he returned the keys, he had bought two coloured fobs from the hardware shop on the high street, and put them on. He even gave me an easy way to remember which was which: Blue for Bottom; Gold (yellow) for Top. Now when I open my door it’s a breeze. My everyday is that bit easier. If that’s not true romance, then I don’t know what is .

Please, FBI, investigate the 1966 World Cup – if only to shut up Greg Dyke

Marina Hyde in The Guardian


 

‘There is a huge section of fans – and, clearly, administrators – with absolutely no idea how much England is detested within world football, nor any idea as to why.’ Illustration: Andrzej Krauze

You know when World Cups started being corrupt? 1970. And anything up to and including 1962. Between those dates, there was a brief and ineffably beautiful interregnum in the chicanery, which thereafter was never allowed to happen again. Why? Well, there was a global sense, really, that the sainted custodians of both tournament and trophy during that time were simply too exquisitely mannered, too morally faultless, too humble, too generous-spirited, too brilliant at football ever to be permitted to shame the rest of the world in this manner again.

Did you enjoy that story? If so, you may be Greg Dyke, or have suffered a recent head trauma. Either way, please seek help immediately.

The Fifa scandal erupted a mere 10 days ago, and it took barely two of those for England to make it all about itself. Ooh, you’ve no idea how they treated us during the bid process. Ooh, the main thing about this is that we should be given one of the disputed World Cups. The scale of the FBI takedown of Fifa is vast. England is like a diner in one of the ground-floor restaurants of the Towering Inferno building, wondering how what’s going on upstairs is going to affect its drinks order. Odd how they underplay the fact that England’s bid team gave the wives of the executive committee – their wives! – Mulberry handbags. This isn’t being “above” bribery. It’s being unable to get out of the group stages of bribery.

Already, culture secretary John Whittingdale has announced that England is ready to host the 2022 World Cup, should Qatar be stripped of it. Newsflash, buddy: at their current rate of acquisition of English landmarks, Qatar will already own all our major stadiums and half our infrastructure by 2022, so that’ll be just the sort of pyrrhic two-fingers in which we specialise. Yes, Qatar, you’ll know we’ve really beaten you when England lose to Paraguay in the opening match of the tournament at Liverpool’s Qatar Airways stadium (when you go down the tunnel on to the pitch there’s a spine-tingling sign that reads “THIS IS DOHA”.)

I say “we”, but there is no longer a “we” as far as the Fifa exposé goes. We had a good innings, being all in it together. People who don’t even care for football were remarking how watchable footballing arrests were. The utter insufferability of Sepp Blatter was something we could all get behind, while his victory last Friday was an election result on which we could all agree, so soon after our own one, on which we couldn’t.

But the point-missing parochialism was always in the post, and its arrival marks the end of the cross-party, cross-club, cross-everything love-in that has characterised the Fifa story.

From phone-ins to frontbenches, you now cannot move for Little Englanders telescoping world football down to their concerns. At their notional helm is FA chairman Greg Dyke, who did such a bang-up job dealing with the Hutton inquiry that he’s decided to come and bring that same grasp of nuance to what he presumably imagines to be his moment on the global stage. I suppose the best you can say is that there’s less left to damage with English football than there was with the BBC. But really, there hasn’t been a managerial double whammy like it since André Villas-Boas swept from Chelsea to Tottenham.

Historically, there have been few statements less guaranteed to fill you with confidence than “this is a matter for the FA”. Unless you count something like “this is a matter for the Jockey Club”, whose two-legged overlords were traditionally intellectually outclassed by their four-legged underlings. The competition to be the worst-run British sporting body is always hard fought, but the FA has won the title more than any of the others.

And they look to have another in the bag with their reflexive prejudging of corruption allegations, ill-advised speculation about the FBI investigation, and jingoistic bleats about how unfair it all is. It’s just a marginally more self-regarding version of throwing cafeteria furniture across a city square in a Sun-issue Tommy hat. They are naturally supported by said newspaper, whose Pooterish idea that Sepp Blatter was paying attention to what was in their leader column saw it declare in 2010: “Today the Sun makes this plea to Mr Blatter and Fifa. Don’t be put off by the BBC rehashing ancient history. Despite BBC muck-raking, the Sun trusts Fifa to put football first.”

Even our football-loving prime minister is just another Englishman whose criticism of Fifa is based solely on self-interest, as opposed to principle, and whose pettiness only serves to underscore the global perception that our position on everything is based on sour grapes. Back in 2010, he too criticised the British media for daring to investigate Fifa, while the bid team called it “unpatriotic”. Cameron has spent the past week falsifying his anti-Blatter history while failing to disguise his belief that nicking the 2018 World Cup hosting rights would be the perfect money-shot to his prime ministership.

England ready to host 2022 World Cup in place of Qatar, culture secretary says



Consider these powers the perfect spiritual leaders for a tribe whose analogue is probably those Americans who genuinely hadn’t a clue they were even disliked before 9/11. There is a huge section of fans – and, clearly, administrators – with absolutely no idea how much England is detested within world football, nor any idea as to why. And no interest in getting one.

Ideally, each and every one of them would be forced to attend a six-week residential course in which a series of instructors prepared detailed presentations on the matter, which concluded with the rhetorical inquiry: “Do you now understand why everyone thinks we’re just absolutely massive arses?”

Unfortunately, I am told that given the numbers involved this is not a scaleable solution. In which case, just for the merriment, please, please let the FBI open an investigation into how hosting rights for the 1966 World Cup were won. I don’t even care about international law any more, or the increasingly bonkers mission creep which has seen the US announce additional probes into the 2010 and 2014 World Cups, as well the 2018 and 2022 vote, and which will now clearly end in this being the US’s legal equivalent of Nam. I just want someone – anyone – to bring home the realisation that we really are the Ukip of international football. And, increasingly, of international life.