The Chronikler

Why doesn’t God use Faithbook?

By Khaled Diab

If God wants to reach out to humanity, why rely on prophets and scripture when he presumably has the power to connect with each of us directly?

3 September 2010

An article I recently read posits that, even if we were able to create a foolproof experiment to prove the existence of God, it would not only spell the end of atheism, but also of Christianity (and I presume the same applies to the other monotheistic religions), because without faith there can be no religion.

But do we really need to wait for God to rear his divine face to lay to rest the spectre of religion? For the sceptics among us, this is figuratively a doomsday scenario, as we would have to live with our doubts until the Day of Reckoning comes, which we, of course, highly suspect won’t arrive, leaving us stuck in a sort of secular purgatory for all eternity.

But it strikes me that we’re asking the wrong question here. God may prove to be an impossible hypothesis to (dis)prove, but the same does not apply to faith itself. I believe we can test the veracity of religion, especially religious scripture which claims to be divinely inspired or even revealed.  So, here is my own modest attempt to test run religion and show that it is not worthy of our faith.

God, the author, or humanity, the ghost writer?

The holy books of the three Abrahamic faiths all claim divine authorship, or at the very least, divine inspiration. But if scripture contains the word of God (or his son), why do the monotheistic religious texts show such clear signs of human authorship and contain a recycled mix of older, often polytheistic, myths and legends (Sumerian, Persian, Egyptian, etc.)?

Moreover, if the message in scripture, like the Supreme Being, is timeless and for all time, why do they teach us values and standards that we would, otherwise, find reprehensible and unacceptable, such as slavery (in Judaism, Christianity and Islam), the subjugation of women, the slaughtering of your (read God’s) enemies?

In defending religion, many believers will argue that scripture appeared in the context of a different time and place and, so, not all of it is binding in the modern context. But if we go down the road of selectively choosing which articles of faith to hold on it, what’s to stop us from ditching it all and starting from scratch to create something more appropriate?

Similarly, scripture contradicts so many scientifically proven facts – and contradicts itself, such as in the case of the creation of the world in Genesis I and Genesis II – that it would cast serious doubt on God’s knowledge of the Universe he reportedly created.

Scripture v Faithbook

The Abrahamic tradition of religion is founded on the dual pillars of message (in the form of scripture) and messenger (in the form of prophets and even the son of God). The most fundamental question this raises is: what is the point of this?

If God is omnipotent and omnipresent, surely he could conjure up more imaginative and effective ways to communicate with his creations. As any good communicator knows, messages are often distorted or corrupted in their transmission. So, what better way to avoid confusion than to drop outdated and outmoded scriptures and communicate with each of us directly?

After all, we humble humans already possess the technology, if it were universally distributed, to communicate with everyone on the planet, and social networking sites already boast hundreds of millions of users. So, why can’t God use his omni-powers to create some sort of interactive interface, a sort of Faithbook, to talk to every human? I’m sure he’d have billions of friends (or should that be worshippers?) if he did.

Some might say that God doesn’t have the time to waste on this, but I thought he had all the time in the Universe. Others might argue that this world is a test of our faith and, by revealing himself to each of us, God would be making it too easy. Well, Adam and Eve lived by God’s side and still they disobeyed him – that’s the beauty of free will.

Besides, as they stand, the Abrahamic religions are exclusive clubs that only save those who belong to them. If God is as just and loving as they say he is, then surely he would want to offer all humanity an equal shot at salvation. By addressing us individually, God would be doing the ultimate to empower and enfranchise his creations – not to mention, hold us accountable – and to democratise religion.

Raise prophets by cutting out the middlemen

As purportedly the ultimate proponent of equality, God should not be elevating some humans above others. Yet, between us and him, he has elevated prophets and clergy. If God’s prophets are meant to be role models to us all, why are so many of them such unpleasant characters or commit acts which would otherwise be regarded as reprehensible, or at the very least unacceptable: stealing from neighbours, committing war crimes, sexually coercing women and killing their husbands, committing incest, marrying children, murdering siblings, and much more.

And even though many prophets had commendable attributes, they were human and are, hence, fallible, so it is best that God cut out these middlemen – and they are always men.

Humanity’s forgotten half

The human race is, more or less, evenly divided between men and women. Despite the insistence of religious modernisers and reformers that God is an equal opportunities creator, scripture seems to place men consistently a cut above women, and demands that women obey men.

Right from the word go, Genesis informs us that Adam was created first and Eve was fashioned out of his rib (or simply created after him, according to the Islamic version). Not only is this creation myth totally unscientific, it also makes no symbolic sense. With the human reproductive functions being what they are, one would expect that, if anyone were to come second, Adam would follow Eve. Even at the molecular level, we see that two X chromosomes result in a female, while an X and a Y chromosome result in a male, which might suggest that the male gender is more ambiguous than the female.

To add insult to injury, Eve leads Adam astray by convincing him to eat from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge. In the Islamic version, they are both blamed equally but, still, there are numerous passages in the Qur’an which stress the inferior status of women. For example, Surat al-Nisa (Verse on Women) informs us quite explicitly that: “Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because God has given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore, the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in (the husband’s) absence what God would have them guard.”

This raises the question of why God is such a macho, especially considering that there’s little actual difference between the two genders, and women have consistently proven themselves men’s equals in all walks of life. If, as scripture seems to suggest, women are so much more imperfect and fallible than men, why on earth did the Supreme Being bother to create them? Couldn’t he have just made humanity asexual? Or could it be because it was man who created God in his image, rather than the other way around?

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Religious freedom at stake in Egypt

By Osama Diab

If you don't fast during Ramadan in Egypt, lie about it; hide it. Otherwise, you might land in jail.

26 August 2010

Tarek Elshabini, a 21-year-old engineering student, is Muslim, but only according to his personal ID card. Every year when Ramadan comes, he faces a dilemma: he doesn't fast because he's an atheist, but everyone, including police officers, expects him to fast because he was born to a Muslim family.

In order to avoid any possible clashes between Elshabini and his family due to his non-religious credos, he decided to move away for a while until they are able to live with this new reality. Most families, in what was called the most religious country in the world by Gallup, would find it bitter to swallow the fact that their son does not believe God exists.

Elshabini managed to find a job in Hurghada as a bar tender in a night club to make his getaway, and on his second day in the Red Sea tourist city, he had to go to the police station to acquire the certificate of good conduct required by his new employer. After a few hours of struggling with governmental bureaucracy, Elshabini got his clean criminal record and was out of the police station at noon.

To kill his thirst, Elshabini stopped at the kiosk across from the police station for a soda. He stood there, bought a can of soda and lit a cigarette. Elshabini had no idea that last Ramadan at least 150 people were arrested in Aswan and Hurghada, where he just arrived, for eating, drinking or/and smoking in broad daylight during Ramadan. This was new and it was the first time it had occurred in Egypt.

It wasn't the last time though. This year, two micro-bus drivers were also arrested in Cairo for the same reason. A Ramadan crackdown was also carried out by police officers in Hurghada to arrest those who eat, smoke or drink publicly before sunset.

While Elshabini was smoking his cigarette and drinking his soda, a plain-clothed officer came up to him and asked what his name was before he invited him into the police station. "At this point, I thought that I might have forgotten something inside while getting my papers, and this very nice man was going to help me get it," explains Elshabini.

The officer knew from his middle name, Ahmed, that he was a "Muslim".

In Egypt, personal ID cards state the citizen's religions. The government of Egypt only recognises the three Abrahamic faiths: Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Therefore, atheists like Tarek, have to state one of these religions in their ID cards.

The officer then told Elshabini he was arrested on the charge of "public breaking of the fast" and locked him up in detention. For three hours, no one would talk to him or tell him what was happening until the officer who arrested him came back. "I kept telling him I was sorry, and that I forgot that it was Ramadan and that I was fasting; anything just to get myself out of this," says Elshabini.

Heba Morayef, a Human Right Watch researcher, explains that there is no such crime as "public breaking of the fast". "The arrest of people for smoking in public during Ramadan is illegal under both Egyptian and international law. These arrests are arbitrary in the absence of any legal provisions under Egyptian law," says Morayef.

After three hours of begging, Elshabini was finally released. "I'll believe you this time, and I'll let you off with no police report. How's that for a favor?" Elshabini says the officer told him.

Morayef also believes that these arrests seem to be occurring as a result of initiatives of individual police stations rather than a top-down policy by the ministry of interior. She believes, though, that this does not absolve the government of the responsibility for these illegal arrests. "The government must clearly issues instructions that its security officers do not have the right to arrest people who appear not to be fasting," she adds.

"Ramadan is the time of year that I would very much like to disappear from the face of the earth. Everybody is badly infected with this mass religious hysteria, and people start to interfere in other people's business," says Elshabini.

The story of Elshabini shows how Egypt's relatively secular police is becoming increasingly intolerant when it comes to freedom of religion. It also demonstrates the government's failure to acknowledge that there are people who might not believe in Islam, Christianity or Judaism. Egyptian law still does not address this issue either. Until last year, members of the Baha'i faiths had to write Muslim on their ID cards because the law does not recognise the Baha'ism as a religion. Last year, the court allowed Baha'is to choose to leave the religion field blank.

These arrests also show that freedom of religion and belief is in danger in Egypt which has always been known for its relative religious tolerance, especially in contrast with more theocratic regimes in the region, such as Saudi Arabia and most of the Gulf countries, Sudan and Iran, but for a second year in a row, this seems to be changing, at least on an unofficial level.

"After three of the most humiliating hours in my life, I couldn't believe what was happening. At some point, I thought that this was a TV show or something; that this was a trick, but unfortunately, every part of what happened was real," says Elshabini.

However, many Egyptians are against these arrests. A facebook group called 'Egyptians from all beliefs are against the arresting of non-fasters in Ramadan' attracted some 800 members in just a few days. "Respect expected by people who fast should be based on personal choice," says Hany Freedom, the creator of the online group who chose to go by his Facebook name. "Otherwise, how would the faster know if others are considerate out of conviction or only because they are forced to."

This article first appeared in The Staggers blog of The New Statesman on 23 August 2010. Republished here with the author's permission. Read comments on this article here. ©Osama Diab. All rights reserved.

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Embodying the mind

By Khaled Diab

In philosophy and religion, the body is merely a hollow shell for our mind and soul. But what if our bodies not only confine but also define us?

9 April 2010

For centuries, our poor, fragile, vulnerable bodies have received something of a bad press. Occupying the temporal, physical plane, as they do, they are what make us weak and fallible; they succumb to temptation and are immersed in ‘sin’.

Though, at one level, they may be our temples, they are also regarded as our flesh pots. The devout try to release themselves of the body’s mortal bonds through physically demanding – even harmful – devotions, such as fasting and self-flagellation.

In contrast, our souls and minds, are objects of disembodied, otherworldly beauty – they are pure, essential manifestations of who we are, uncontaminated by the whims and wiles of our carnal body, occupying the paradise of the metaphysical plane. Most religions regard the body as the prison of the soul, while the dualist view of philosophy sees the mind as somehow existing apart from and independently of the body.

Thought experiments seemed to back this up. René Descartes embarked upon a quest in which he called all his previous beliefs into doubt. Though he could doubt whether he had a body, the only thing he could be certain of was that he had a mind, because of his ability to think.

But tempting as it is to subscribe to Descartes famous adage, “I think, therefore, I am”, and all it says about the apparent power and independence of our higher faculties, evidence is mounting that out bodies are far more than mere vessels for our minds but actually intimately shape our every thought, including abstract ones.

A recent feature in New Scientist explored how science is gradually uncovering the mystery of how our bodies do the thinking. For example, one study showed that eye movement and abstract thought are linked.

Another experiment suggests that the physical and emotional are closely intertwined. It would appear that our tendency to describe good things as facing upwards – ‘high’, ‘elated’ and ‘upright’ – and bad things as pointing downward – ‘down in the dumps’, ‘downside’ or even ‘lowlife’ – is no simple metaphor and physical movement does affect the way we look at things. For instance, in one experiment, the direction in which people were moving marbles – up or down – often affected the way they answered neutral questions, such as “tell me what happened yesterday”.

More sinisterly, in a manner of speaking, our physical attributes, such as our handedness, seem to hold a certain amount of sway on our judgement. One experiment which asked 286 students to judge the personal characteristics of cartoon characters standing to the left and to the right found that 210 of them showed a clear rightward or leftward preference. Amazingly, of these, 65% of the left-handed students described the characters on the left more positively, while 54% of the right-handed students regarded the characters on the right more positively.

Since most of us are right-handed, this might explain why we say someone who is good is ‘righteous’, why we don’t speak of ‘human lefts’ and why someone who used their left hand was considered ‘sinister’ (meaning ‘left’ in Latin) in the Middle Ages and ran the risk of being accused of witchcraft. Of course, we have overcome this prejudice in our enlightened age and many of us happily describe ourselves as leftists, though many rightists do still view us as the devil’s spawn!

So, given the growing evidence that our ‘minds’ are simply another, if more sophisticated, of our bodily functions, why have we regarded our intellects as being separate from our brains and bodies for so long. This could partly be caused by the confusion aroused by the fact that our thoughts can apparently defy the laws of physics and be in many places at once, and our minds can travel in time and space without our bodies, and switch between reality and fantasy in the blink of an eye.

In addition, this dichotomy is borne of our ancient frustration at the physical and time limitations our bodies impose upon us – the tragedy of our brains is that the consciences they grant us have led us to grow too big for our biodegradable physical boots, prompting the wish to outsmart them, through the invention of the mind, and outlive them, through the creation of the soul.

So, what implications does this emerging line of research have, beyond delivering humanity with another dent to its collective ego? Well, for starters, we’d have to rephrase Descartes famous adage. I suggest: “I stink, therefore, I think.”

Moreover, just as modern science has marked not only the death of God but also the death of the human soul, it now looks like the death knell has sounded for the metaphysical “mind”, too.

In a future of ‘ambient intelligence’, we’ll need to dedicate some effort to studying whether creating artificial intelligence that is similar to our own, will require us to create robots with bodies like ours or whether computer models simulating intelligence are enough? In addition, if intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe developed in radically different physical bodies would that mean they have developed radically different forms of abstract thought or is there a common element to abstract thought, regardless of the creature developing it?

How about future humanity itself? What if we radically re-engineer our bodies using genetic engineering techniques and nano-technology, would our cognition and perceptions vary dramatically, too? What kind of people will we become if we, one day, get rid of our bodies all together and upload our minds into ‘the cloud’ once our bodies expire? Maybe this is the heaven we’ve obsessed over for so long about.

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Climate change in Camelot

By Robert Adler

In South Dakota, everyone knows that the climate is just right - and that global warming is just the hot air of science.

Monday 15 March 2010

“It’s true! It’s true! The crown has made it clear.

The climate must be perfect all the year.

A law was made a distant moon ago here:

July and August cannot be too hot.

And there’s a legal limit to the snow here

In Camelot.”

- Camelot, by Alan Jay Lerner & Frederic Loewe

 The legislature of the State of South Dakota distinguished itself by passing an anti-climate change resolution – House Concurrent Resolution No. 1009 – in February.

 No, the legislature did not follow King Arthur’s lead by attempting to stabilise the state’s climate by decree. Instead, it called for “the balanced teaching of global warming” in South Dakota’s public schools, borrowing the language and tactics of the ongoing campaign to force the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in America’s schools.

On a 36 to 20 vote, South Dakota’s House of Representatives urged the state’s schools to teach that global warming is a theory rather than a proven fact. Teachers are to impress on students that the significance and “interrelativity” of the “variety of climatological, meteorological, astrological [sic], thermological, cosmological, and ecological dynamics” that determine global weather patterns are “largely speculative”, and that the scientific investigation of global warming has been “complicated and prejudiced” by “political and philosophical viewpoints.”

The resolution concludes with a seemingly innocent statement urging that “all instruction on the theory of global warming be appropriate to the age and academic development of the student and to the prevailing classroom circumstances”.

The phrase I’ve italicised is a coded way of warning teachers not to present climate change in a way that might anger students or parents who believe that climate change is a hoax hatched by the UN to frighten ordinary citizens, justify draconian laws and enrich greedy scientists. It’s similar to language advocated by the right-wing group Students for Academic Freedom in its ‘Academic Bill of Rights’, which has been used to attack and even sue college professors whose teaching goes against the beliefs of conservative students.

 It’s all too easy to trivialise the South Dakota House Resolution and poke holes in the facts and reasoning advanced to support it. The resolution’s use of “astrological” instead of “astronomical”, the flawed list of anti-climate-change evidence it presents – that the earth has been cooling for the last eight years, that there is no evidence of warming in the troposphere, that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but “the gas of life” – and the argument that the existence of naturally driven climate change in the past rules out human-caused climate change today, makes for a document that’s hard to take seriously.

 Even South Dakota’s senate seems to agree. They stripped out the most embarrassing verbiage before passing their own version of the resolution on 24 February.

 I suppose that, from a European perspective, the whole issue may seem quaint and laughable – just another example of America’s amusing lack of sophistication.

 Unfortunately, the resolution has to be taken seriously. It stands as the latest – but by no means the last – skirmish in a long and continuing battle for the minds, as well as the hearts, of America’s children. As reported by New Scientist, the Texas school board – whose annual purchase of some 48 million textbooks allows it to determine what most of the nation’s children study – voted last March to require textbooks to question the existence of global warming, and, in an astonishing kowtow to “young-earth creationists”, deleted the 14-billion-year age of the universe from the science curriculum.

 It’s not just climate change, evolution, or the age of the earth which are in the crosshairs in this battle, but science as a whole. The religious-conservative movement that helps elect creationist school board members across the country, state legislators like Resolution 1009’s author, Don Kopp, the 110 members of the United States Congress who win perfect ratings from ultraconservative groups, or Senator James Inhofe who now wants to file criminal charges against US and British climate scientists, has a far more ambitious agenda – nothing less than to replace the pluralistic secular humanism that most people think has defined the United States since its inception with religious fundamentalism.

 The movement dates at least to the 1980s, when the Rev. Pat Robertson founded the Christian Coalition with the stated goal of advancing a Christian agenda nationwide through grassroots activism. This still-growing movement has made it clear that it is determined to redefine America in the light of the “truth” that the nation was founded not on the basis of the rationalism of the Enlightenment, but on fundamentalist Christian beliefs. They see the Bible as true and the Constitutional wall separating church and state as a dangerous myth. Be it evolution, global climate change, or embryonic stem cell research, when science gets in the way, it will be attacked.

 As reported in the New York Times, attacking climate change along with evolution may be a way to get around court rulings that so far have found that singling out evolution for so-called balanced presentation in textbooks and classes is clearly religiously motivated and violates the separation of church and state. By also targeting global warming, the age of the universe, or the origin of life, anti-evolutionists can claim that they are merely advocating academic freedom and fair play.

 And I suppose it doesn’t hurt that the same politicians who depend on the votes of true believers also depend on campaign contributions by corporations that are strongly motivated to keep pumping crude oil, mining coal, and pouring greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

 At least in the United States, this is not a challenge to which scientists and those who recognise that science can only thrive in an environment that values facts and reason over Bible-based belief and God-given truth can remain indifferent or uninvolved. A war has been declared, and scientists and their supporters can no more wish it away than South Dakota’s legislators can resolve away global climate change.

Published with the author's permission. ©Robert Adler. All rights reserved.

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Egyptian football’s pious turn

By Osama Diab

The national team is increasingly flaunting its Muslim religiosity. Where does that leave Christian, let alone secular Egyptians?

4 February 2010

I am a big fan of Egypt's football team, and I have a jersey with six stars sitting in my closet that I take out proudly on days of decisive games to show support for them. The stars symbolise every African cup Egypt has won since 1957, when it claimed its first. I hope that Egypt will be able to add a seventh title to its impressive record by winning the cup in the tournament currently underway.

But I'm facing a real moral dilemma here. The national team of Egypt is starting to symbolise everything I stand against, namely homogeneity and intolerance. Should I keep rooting for my team despite the fact that it has taken an uncomfortable ideological diversion? Or should I keep my beliefs separate from my team affiliation?

My quandary is rooted in a statement by Hassan Shehata, the Egyptian national coach, who said that his squad selection is not only based on skills and competence, but also on piety. Also, the team's nickname is gradually changing from the Pharaohs to Montakhab el-Sagedeen (literally the team of prostrators). Sogood, or prostration, is an Islamic religious act used to express gratitude for God after achieving something. After scoring any goal, the entire Egyptian soccer team put their faces against the ground to show their thankfulness.

"Without [piety], we will never select any player regardless of his potential. I always strive to make sure that those who wear the Egypt jersey are on good terms with God," Hassan Shehata said, according to AP. Al-Shorouk also quoted Shehata saying that striker Mido, who once had a ponytail and dated Miss Belgium 2000, Joke van de Velde, was dismissed because he did not live up to the manager's pious ideals.

This will soon result in a situation where only practicing Muslims identify strongly with the team. Secular Muslims and religious minorities will feel indifferent at best. The team currently doesn't have a Christian player, in a country where at least 10% of the population are Christians. Hany Ramzy, one of the best defenders in the history of Egyptian football, was a Coptic Christian. However, the next time this happens, the Christian player will feel like an outcast if religious players, like Ahmed Fathy, force everyone to kneel after scoring a goal.

This phenomenon is just one small part of a bigger problem. Egypt is turning rapidly into a homogeneous society, where you need to be male, Muslim, physically able, young and from a middle-class urban area in order not to feel alienated.

I don't believe the phenomenon is just about religious beliefs. It is as much about sticking more than ever to traditional values to protect the fabric of society against cultural attacks from outside. It's a characteristic of weak societies to perceive anything foreign as a threat, including principles of equality, tolerance and justice.

This article will also be considered by some as one more evil attempt to impose western ideas on our pious eastern society, but diversity and tolerance should not only be western values but universal ones.

This column appeared in The Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free section on 29 January 2010. Read the related discussion.

Published here with the author's permission. ©Osama Diab. All rights reserved.

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Polygamy for all

By Khaled Diab

A Saudi journalist is demanding that women be given the right to four husbands. Should equality mean monogamy or polygamy for all?

6 January 2010

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Faith in our children

By Khaled Diab

Much as we’d like our children to hold the same things dear as we do, we should have enough faith in them to let them choose their own belief system.

27 November 2009

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Good grief!

By Christian Nielsen

There is something of an inner circle to mourning whose circumference varies from culture to culture. Knowing where you fit in takes some research.

4 November 2009

You never greet the ‘real mourners’ at a Jewish funeral. Only the closest family at a Swedish funeral wear a special white tie. And you bring condolence money in a special black and silver decorated envelope to a Japanese funeral.

The news of death is never easy to take but for those not in the inner circle it can also be confusing and awkward, from what to say on the card to what to wear at the funeral, or even if you should attend the funeral or send a card.

Attending funerals in a foreign country, with different traditions and mourning practices, is really a minefield. Do you send flowers? If so, what kind? Do you attend the ‘party’ afterwards – what do you call the party?

Grief seems to be a universal response to death or loss, but just how it is expressed – ritually and emotionally – differs between people, communities and cultures. The Encyclopaedia of Death and Dying – it really exists – even notes a scholarly distinction between grief and mourning on a cultural level.

“Grief is a subjective state, a set of feelings that arise spontaneously after a significant death,” it says, “whereas mourning is a set of rituals or behaviors prescribed by culture's tradition.”

But the concept of grief is a modern construct, it goes on. “Grief as a real subjective state grows from a culture that prizes and cultivates individual experience.”

In Japan, for example, grief can be considered an expression of social harmony – within the family or community – not an individual expression. Hitan, the nearest equivalent word for grief in Japanese, doesn’t necessarily imply a response to death or loss – just sadness or sorrow.

The Irish, on the other hand, appear to embrace both grief and mourning for its individual and ritual significance, typified in the Irish wake where kin and community come from near and far to pay their respects to the departed and his family.

Outward expressions of grief like keening – a mix of wailing and chanting – are less common nowadays, but still form part of the Irish myth. The Catholic religion also obviously plays its role in traditional wakes, with mourners taking turns to kneel by the body to pray or offer a Rosary. After the funeral, people gather again at the deceased’s home or a venue to remember and celebrate his life.

“There’s grief and sadness, but there are also anecdotes and shared memories that collectively celebrate the person’s life, not his death,” an Irish friend tells me. “And then there’s the Guinness – the elixir mediating grief and gaiety,” he adds.

Protestant and private?

Now take the Swedes, whose mourning is more private and inward – more Protestant, dare I say. Only the closest of family and friends attend the funeral. It is altogether more discrete and sombre.

An Englishman recently posted a question on an online forum in Sweden to find out how he should respond to the death of a colleague’s father. The responses were mixed. Many said, yes, he should express sympathy to the colleague (a card, message of condolence) but that it would not be appropriate to attend the funeral or other arrangements.

A similar question was posed in which the person wanted to know how to behave when his girlfriend’s father died… what to say, wear, do, etc. He didn’t feel he could consult anyone close to the deceased, as it felt out of place. The answer he got speaks volumes about the different cultural responses and rituals even from one side of Europe to the other.

And I quote: “It is usual to ring the number on the press announcement to the funeral home and inform them you will be attending (catering). It is usual to take a single flower (like a rose or something) as well as any other flowers you might send to place on the coffin at a particular moment in the service where the vicar asks people to come forward and say their goodbyes.

“Sometimes there is a clue in the press announcement about whether the family want a donation to a charity instead of a funeral bouquet from relatives (although you should still take the single flower).

“There is usually a ‘do’ afterwards – often in the church hall or a nearby restaurant. Usually it is something simple like open sandwiches/salad [sic]. Close relatives and friend[s] make speeches.”

Grief, not all human

Just for interest’s sake, apparently grief is not strictly speaking a human preserve, according to the wonderful Death and Dying Encyclopedia.

“In every culture people cry or seem to want to cry after a death that is significant to them,” it says. Grief could also be an instinctive response shaped by evolutionary development. “Primates and birds display behaviours that seem similar to humans’ in response to death and separation. Instinctual response in this sense is a meta-interpretative scheme programmed into our genetic inheritance, much as nest building or migration is hard-wired into birds.”

It goes on: “Culture, of course, influences how people appraise situations, yet similar perceptions of events trigger similar instinctual responses. A significant death, then, might be regarded as a universal trigger of grieving emotions, although which death is significant enough [to] spark such a response depends on the value system of a particular culture. Universal instincts, then, might provide the basis for concepts that could explain behavior in all cultures.”

So, there you have it.

Published with the author's permission. ©Christian Nielsen. All rights reserved.

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Fatwa fads

By Khaled Diab

From fashion tips to adult breastfeeding – rulings by some clerics range from the eccentric to the downright bizarre.

23 September 2009

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Face to faith: Ramadan for the faith-challenged

By Khaled Diab

Ramadan possesses a certain secular appeal but fasting requires the non-believer to square the philosophical circle.

30 August 2009

Summer Ramadans are the toughest. In northern climes, the yawning chasm that separates dawn from dusk makes the long, meandering days feel less like a pleasant stroll and more like an epic marathon. Further south, the days may be shorter and the hunger less palpable, but the intense heat makes the faster feel lost in a desert of thirst.

Although I no longer do Ramadan, the first time I ever fasted, when I was seven, happened to be one of those endless English summer days upon which the sun never seems to set. Muslim children are not obliged to fast and my parents thought I was too young, but I've always been up for a challenge. Besides, there was a mysterious and exotic appeal to those rituals which transformed life within the confines of our home, but hardly caused a ripple in the routines of the outside world.

That first day, Palestinian friends hosted us for iftar. As our mothers prepared a delicious Middle Eastern banquet to mark the start of the month, the kitchen became a torture chamber – teasing and tormenting me with an array of delicious, mouth-watering aromas.

The last couple of hours were sheer hell: it seemed that time itself had become so hunger-stricken that it could no longer function properly, and crawled from one second to the next like a snail on tranquilisers. All the adults commended me for getting so far and urged me to break my fast, but a stubborn streak inside me insisted that I would eat and drink only when the grown-ups did.

With practice over the years, fasting got much easier physically but much tougher philosophically. Ironically, I took up fasting in a non-Muslim country as a child and abandoned it in a Muslim land as an adult. Even before I lost my faith completely, I was never really a practicing Muslim: I've never prayed regularly, nor have I ever read the Qur'an in its entirety, let alone memorised it. In fact, fasting Ramadan – but not the marathon prayer sessions and Quranic recitals associated with the holy month – is the only aspect of Islam that I have ever stuck to religiously.

I'm not entirely sure why that was. Part of the reason could be the special spirit of solidarity that marks Ramadan. The short fuses, ready tempers and irritability excepted, there is the camaraderie, unison and communalism of the season, the festive air, like Christmas for a whole month, the enchantment associated with the partial reversal of night and day, the bubbling late-night waterpipes, the pre-dawn beans on a Cairo street corner.

More profoundly, another explanation could be that, beyond the religious duty, Ramadan carries a secular appeal. Praying would involve expressing devotion to a being – or creator – and a belief system which have always raised doubts in my mind. In contrast, fasting is not just a ritual for its own sake but is also about self-discipline, exercising control over your body and empathising with the predicament of the less fortunate.

But despite my secularised version of Ramadan, certain tensions between Islamic norms and my a-religious outlook were increasingly thrown into sharp relief. Could girlfriends and later cohabitation mix with fasting? How should I handle my fondness for alcohol? Did I want to be like those non-practicing Muslims who seek salvation for their 'sins' through seasonal devotion, especially as I did not see what I was doing as sinful? As a free-thinker for whom the questions and contradictions in religion multiplied with time – rather than resolved themselves as confident believers assured me they would – could I continue to hold on to an artefact of a faith which clashed with the reality I observed?

Increasingly unable and unwilling to square the philosophical circle, I eventually abandoned this last vestige of my religion because, in the end, I seek food for thought and not for the soul.

This column appeared in The Guardian newspaper's Face to faith series on 29 August 2009. Read the related discussion.

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