Pregnant nun ice cream advert banned for 'mockery'

An ice cream company banned from using an advert displaying a pregnant nun has vowed to position similar posters in London in time for the Pope's visit.

Antonio Federici's advert showed a pregnant nun eating ice cream in a church, together with the strap line "immaculately conceived".

The Advertising Standards Authority has ordered it to be discontinued, saying it mocked Roman Catholic beliefs.

Antonio Federici says it will now put up new posters near Westminster Abbey.
Pope Benedict XVI will visit Westminster Abbey on Friday, before holding Mass at Westminster Cathedral on Saturday.

Antonio Federici, a UK-based company, has yet to reveal what image will be portrayed in the new advert, saying only that it would be "a continuation of the theme".
A spokeswoman for the company said the new image intended to "defy" the ban from the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

She added: "We are in the process of securing a series of billboards close to and along the planned route of the Pope's cavalcade around Westminster Cathedral".
A spokesman for the ASA said its rulings "must be followed and we are taking steps to ensure Antonio Federici do so".

He added: "We do not comment on the likely compliance of ads that have not yet appeared.
"However, we are continuing to conduct work behind the scenes, including with the advertiser, to ensure they comply with the rules."

Defending the banned nun advert, Antonio Federici said the idea of "conception" represented the development of their ice cream.

It added that the use of religious imagery represented its strong feeling towards its product.
The firm said it also wished to "comment on and question, using satire and gentle humour, the relevance and hypocrisy of religion and the attitudes of the church to social issues".
The banned advert was featured in editions of The Lady and Grazia magazines.

The ASA said in its ruling: "We considered the use of a nun pregnant through immaculate conception was likely to be seen as a distortion and mockery of the beliefs of Roman Catholics.
"We concluded that to use such an image in a lighthearted way to advertise ice cream was likely to cause serious offence to readers, particularly those who practised the Roman Catholic faith."
The publishers of The Lady said it had received eight complaints and that it had been a "misjudgement" to have published .

The ASA banned another advert for Antonio Federici in July 2009 that showed a priest and a nun appearing as if they were about to kiss.

A BBC report Here

Jamaat chief condemns the dirty film on the Prophet of Islam

Jamaat chief urges the Indian Government to block the URL of the dirty picture denigrating the Prophet of Islam

Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Tamil Nadu chief A Shabbir Ahmed has strongly condemned the heinous, most outrageous and abominable video film denigrating the last Prophet of Islam. He expressed his agony and anguish over the sinister motives of the film maker. Inspite of the fact that the Prophet of Islam is revered and respected by billions of Muslims worldwide, the film maker has ventured to make such an ugly film on him. This betrays his evil intentions, he said. He urged the US government to take action against the film maker and all those involved in the dirty film and put all of them behind the bars.

The Jamaat leader appealed to the Indian government to block the dirty picture from the internet, before it spreads like wild fire and inflames passions. This would go a long way to maintain communal harmony, he said. He further demanded a complete ban of the dirty film. He has appealed all the peace loving, like minded and noble hearted souls to join together to curb this menace. He appealed them to urge the Indian Government to take effective steps in this regard.

The Jamaat leader lauded the Muslim community world wide for their more mature, peaceful protests against the dirty film. There may have been some stray incidents of violence in Libya and some other places, but, the protests have by and large been entirely peaceful. He urged the Muslim community to maintain the trend and express their distress and pain to the American community in a peaceful and disciplined manner. He also underlined the importance of conveying the true message of the Prophet of Islam to the world community.

இறைத்தூதரைக் இழிவுபடுத்தி அமெரிக்காவில் எடுக்கப்பட்டிருக்கின்ற கேவலமான வெறுக்கத்தக்க, அருவருப்பான திரைப்படத்தை தமிழக ஜமாஅத்தே இஸ்லாமி ஹிந்த் தலைவர் ஏ. ஷப்பீர் அஹ்மத் கடுமையாகக் கண்டித்துள்ளார்.

 ஏ. ஷப்பீர் அஹ்மத் வெளியிட்டுள்ள பத்திரிகை அறிக்கை பின்வருமாறு:  

உலகம் முழுவதும் கோடிக்கணக்கான முஸ்லிம்களால் உயிரினும் மேலாய் மதிக்கப்படுகின்ற ஒப்பற்ற தலைவர்தாம் அண்ணல் நபிகளார்(ஸல்) என்பது எல்லோரும் அறிந்த ஒன்று. இது தெரிந்த நிலையிலும் அமெரிக்க படத் தயாரிப்-பாளர் அண்ணல் நபிகளாரை இழிவுபடுத்துகின்ற விதத்தில் கேடுகெட்ட படத்தைத் தயாரித்திருக்கின்றார். இது அவருடைய தீய நோக்கத்தை வெளிப்படுத்துகின்றது என்றும் ஷப்பீர் அஹ்மத் தெரிவித்தார்.

இந்த கேடுகெட்ட படத்தைத் தயாரித்த தயாரிப்பாளர் மீதும் அவருக்குத் துணை நின்ற பிறர் மீதும் அவருக்குப் பின்புலத்தில் இயங்குகின்றவர்கள் மீதும் கடும் நடவடிக்கை எடுக்கும் படியும் படத்தயாரிப்பில் ஈடுபட்ட அனைவரையும் கைது செய்து சிறையில் அடைக்கும்படியும் அவர் அமெரிக்க அரசாங்கத்தைக் கேட்டுக்-கொண்டார்.

இந்தக் கேடுகெட்ட படம் இணையத்தின் ஊடே காட்டுத் தீ போல் பரவி மக்களின் உணர்வுகளைக் கிளர்ந்தெழச் செய்து பெரும் பாதிப்பை ஏற்படுத்து-வதற்குள்ளாக இதனை வெளியிட்டுள்ள இணையத்தளங்கள் அனைத்தையும் முடக்கிவிடுமாறு ஜமாஅத் தலைவர் இந்திய அரசைக் கேட்டுக்கொண்டுள்ளார். நாட்டில் சமூக நல்லிணக்கம் செழித்தோங்குவதற்கு அரசின் இந்த நடவடிக்கை பெரிதும் துணை நிற்கும் என்றும் அவர் கருத்து தெரிவித்தார்.

அது மட்டுமல்லாமல் இந்தக் கேடுகெட்ட படத்தை முற்றாக, முழுவதுமாகத் தடை செய்யும்படியும் அவர் இந்திய அரசைக் கேட்டுக்கொண்டுள்ளார். இந்த விஷயத்தில் தக்க நடவடிக்கை எடுக்கும்படி ஒன்றுபட்டு ஒருமித்த குரலில் விண்ணப்பிக்குமாறு அவர் நாட்டின் அனைத்துத் தரப்பு மக்களையும் சமூக ஆர்வலர்களையும் அமைதியை விரும்புகின்ற நல்லுள்ளங்களையும் கேட்டுக் கொண்டுள்ளார்.

இந்தக் கேடுகெட்ட படத்திற்கு எதிராக அமைதியான முறையில் உலகம் முழுவதும் எதிர்ப்பும் கண்டனமும் தெரிவித்து வருகின்ற உலக முஸ்லிம்களை அவர் பாராட்டினார். லிபியா உள்ளிட்ட சில இடங்களில் நடந்த சிற்சில வன் நிகழ்வுகளைத் தவிர்த்துவிட்டுப் பார்த்தால் உலகம் முழுவதும் அமைதியான முறையில்தான் ஆர்ப்பாட்டங்களும் கண்டன ஊர்வலங்களும் நடந்துள்ளன. அமைதியான முறையில் எதிர்ப்பைத் தெரிவிக்கின்ற தங்களின் இந்த வழிமுறை-யைத் தொடருமாறு அவர் முஸ்லிம்களைக் கேட்டுக்கொண்டார். அதே சமயம் அண்ணல் நபிகளாரின் ஆளுமையை உலக மக்களுக்கு அறிமுகப்படுத்த வேண்டிய அவசியத்தையும் அவர் வலியுறுத்தினார்.

More. Here

Discussing the motives of the Afghan shooter

Here’s a summary of the Western media discussion of what motivated U.S. Staff Sgt. Robert Bales to allegedly kill 16 Afghans, including 9 children: he was drunk, he was experiencing financial stress, he was passed over for apromotion, he had a traumatic brain injury, he had marital problems, he suffered from the stresses of four tours of duty, he “saw his buddy’s leg blown off the day before the massacre,” etc.

Here’s a summary of the Western media discussion of what motivates Muslims to kill Americans: they are primitive, fanatically religious, hateful Terrorists.

Even when Muslims who engage in such acts toward Americans clearlyand repeatedly explain that they did it in response to American acts of domination, aggression, violence and civilian-killing in their countries, and even when the violence is confined to soldiers who are part of a foreign army that has invaded and occupied their country, the only cognizable motive is one of primitive, hateful evil. It is an act of Evil Terrorism, and that is all there is to say about it.

Note, too, that in the case of Sgt. Bales (or any other cases of American violence against Muslims), people have little difficulty understanding the distinction between (a) discussing and trying to understand the underlying motives of the act (causation) and (b) defending the act (justification). But that same distinction completely evaporates when it comes to Muslim violence against Americans. Those who attempt to understand or explain the act — they’re responding to American violence in their country; they are traumatized and angry at the continuous deaths of Muslim children and innocent adults; they’ve calculated that striking at Americans is the ony way to deter further American aggression in their part of the world — are immediately accused of mitigating, justifying or even defending Terrorism.

There is, quite obviously, a desperate need to believe that when an American engages in acts of violence of this type (meaning: as a deviation from formal American policy), there must be some underlying mental or emotional cause that makes it sensible, something other than an act of pure hatred or Evil. When a Muslim engages in acts of violence against Americans, there is an equally desperate need to believe the opposite: that this is yet another manifestation of inscrutable hatred and Evil, and any discussion of any other causes must be prohibited and ignored.

Glenn Greenwald in Readexpress. Here

How British, American and European firms exploit Indian 'guinea pigs'

Western pharmaceutical companies have seized on India over the past five years as a testing ground for drugs – making the most of a huge population and loose regulations which help dramatically cut research costs for lucrative products to be sold in the West. The relationship is so exploitative that some believe it represents a new colonialism.

Since restrictions on drug trials were relaxed in 2005, the industry in India has swollen to the point where today more than 150,000 people are involved in at least 1,600 clinical trials, conducted on behalf of British, American and European firms including AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Merck. There may be more.

While there is no official figure, some estimates suggest the industry may be worth as much as £189m. Regulators have struggled to keep pace with the explosion. Between 2007 and 2010, at least 1,730 people died in India while, or after, participating in such trials. Many of those people, often only eligible for the studies because they were ill, might have died anyway. Yet when there are complications, even those resulting in deaths, there is often a failure properly to investigate.

Andrew Buncombe and Nina Lakhani in The Independent. Here

From tragedy to travesty: Drugs tested on survivors of Bhopal

Secret reports seen by The Independent reveal that drug trials funded by western pharmaceutical firms at the Indian hospital set up for survivors of the Bhopal disaster violated international ethical standards and could have put patients at risk.

Some 14 patients died during the three trials examined by the reports. In one trial, for an antibiotic, five out of seven patients died during the trial or soon after it finished. While there is no suggestion that every death merits compensation, critics say there has been no adequate investigation into whether compensation was appropriate in any of the cases. None has ever been paid.

At least eight other trials were carried out on hundreds of Bhopal gas victims. The Independent has evidence of patients who were unaware that they were taking part in a trial at all. The conduct of the trials has exposed the hospital to furious criticism from activists who say that survivors have been used as guinea pigs without proper informed consent.

Nina Lakhani in The Independent. Here

Muslims come out to defend London

Last night Muslim Turks in Hackney chased off looters and Muslims in Whitechappel were defending the Islamic Bank of Britain. Muslims in London have done this before in Harrow when we organised and coordinated in huge numbers to see off the EDL vermin and we should do it again for the benefit of all Londoners in this great city of ours.

More Here and Here 
and AlJazeera report Here

Why London is burning? Five quick points on riots

3
The polarisation between the claim that ‘the riots are a response to unemployment and wasted lives’ and the insistence ‘the violence constitutes mere criminality’ makes little sense. There is clearly more to the riots than simple random hooliganism. But that does not mean that the riots, as many have claimed, are protests against disenfranchisement, social exclusion and wasted lives. In fact, it’s precisely because of disenfranchisement, social exclusion and wasted lives that these are not ‘protests’ in any meaningful sense, but a mixture of incoherent rage, gang thuggery and teenage mayhem.  Disengaged not just from the political process (largely because politicians, especially those on the left, have disengaged from them), but also from a sense of the community or the collective, there is a generation (in fact more than a generation) with no focus for their anger and resentment, no sense that they can change society and no reason to feel responsible for the consequences of their actions. That is very different from suggesting that the riots were caused by, a response to, or a protest against, unemployment, austerity and the cuts.

Kenan Malik in his blog. Here

Norway is a wake-up call

Are we really living in end times? Every new day brings a new outrage, a new horror.  No one seems to be safe anywhere — not even in the serene, scenic Norwegian paradise. But then, as Bible warns, you reap as you sow. And Europe is reaping what its politicians and assorted purveyors of hatred have sowed all these years.

The perpetual demonization and vilification of “the Other” and the endless talk of creeping Shariah and Islamisation of Europe couldn’t have happened in a vacuum. It had to show its results someday on the ground. And it did in Norway this past week.

Still there are many out there who continue to live in denial. Within the first couple of hours, television pundits, from CNN’s Richard Quest to BBC’s security correspondent Frank Gardener, had persuaded themselves that the Norway attacks were the handiwork of “Islamist terrorists.” Soon Rupert Murdoch’s Sun was screaming: “AL QAEDA MASSACRE: NORWAY’S 9/11”.


Next morning the whole thing was turned on its head when it turned out that it wasn’t the Muslims after all but Norway’s own homebred, all-white, Christian zealot behind Europe’s biggest mass murder by an individual in recent memory. The wonks were in no hurry to condemn Anders Behring Breivik as a “Christian terrorist” though.

They went to great lengths to paint him as a lone ranger who had turned the guns on his own kind in a fit of rage. He did not represent the peace-loving people of Norway or Europe for that matter, they asserted. Of course, he didn’t. But was he an aberration? Was it a random act of madness? I wouldn’t think so.
Indeed, the more details about the attacks emerge, the clearer it becomes it was no chance act of momentary madness. Breivik is the product of years of hate campaign and propaganda against Muslims. So most tragic as these attacks are, they shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, given the madness that has been going on in the name of fighting terror.

And those trying to portray Breivik as a lonely lunatic, an outsider, are not just wrong, they are out of sync with a dangerous reality. They are living in denial of the fast spreading malaise of rabid Islamophobia and intolerance on both sides of the Atlantic and its consequences.

This is not an isolated case of one man going off the bend but represents a growing threat. Breivik’s actions, patiently planned and executed over the past nine years, are entirely consistent with the periodic mass violence European fascists have carried out in recent years. More important, this “madness” was rooted in mainstream right-wing discourse that one even hears from politicians like Sarkozy.

There’s a method in the madness that targeted young Labour Party supporters on Utoya Island. Eskil Pedersen, the youth wing leader of the party, had been increasingly speaking for the Palestinians, calling for an international boycott of Israel.

The intense hatred for Edward Said, the Palestinian author of the seminal Orientalism who had the audacity to hold a mirror to the Empire, is matched by admiration for luminaries like Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer, all known for their “preoccupation” with Islam and Muslims.

So this monster’s manifesto indeed is Mein Kampf of our times, as The Economist puts it, in which Jews are replaced by Muslims as “the Enemy” who must be fought and expunged from the face of the earth. Breivik’s worldview is a lethal mix of Christian zealotry and extreme Islamophobia. And he isn’t alone.

Generations of Europeans and Americans have grown up on a heavy diet of bigotry peddled by politicians like Geert Wilders of Netherlands, who compared the Holy Qur’an to Hitler’s Mein Kempf, and Marine Le Pen of France and Newt Gingrich, Peter King and televangelists like Pat Robertson in the land of the free.

Feeding on the stereotypes and paranoia about Muslims, this new breed of fascism that not surprisingly turns to Israel for inspiration, poses a clear and present danger to our world. The gravest threat we face today comes not from the Islamic world but the radical Christian right and the secular fundamentalists who propagate the bigoted, hateful caricatures of Muslims, as Chris Hedges argues.

Breivik has killed many more people than the four “Muslim” bombers did in the 7/7 London attacks. Indeed, more people may have died in the violence by neo-fascist, radical right groups since the Great War than all the attacks, blamed on Muslims, put together.

Yet Western governments have so far treated such groups with kid gloves. Just as successive governments in India have dealt with the Hindu extremists despite their implication in recent terror attacks and mass violence targeting Muslims. Indeed, police turn on the victims after every such atrocity.

Inaction is a luxury the world cannot afford though, if it is to avoid more mindless carnage and a bigger conflict — in the West or in India. If we continue the way we are going, the confrontation that Samuel Huntington obsessed over all his life cannot for long remain an academic hypothesis. Norway is a wake-up call. Let’s not wait for the next great war to take place between Islam and the West.

Aijaz Zaka Syed in Arab News. Here

Why do the westerners hate Muslims?

Why is there such strong anti-immigrant sentiment in the industrialized democracies, and why does it get focused on Muslims? The shooting rampage and bombing by anti-immigrant Islamophobe Anders Breivik has raised these questions to a fever pitch. But the answers are just not obvious.

I’m not generally a big fan of Milton Friedman. I like my food and drugs and banks regulated, and think I know what happens when they aren’t. But on immigration issues, Friedman had some important insights. Immigration is mostly a response to labor demand, and it is probably fruitless to try to control it too closely. And it could even be economically counter-productive to do so, as Arizona is finding out.

It is mostly a myth that immigrants take jobs away from locals. The places in the US with the highest immigrant populations are not the places with the highest rates of local unemployment. Many immigrants do jobs that locals do not want to do, like pick strawberries or clean toilets in hotels. Others are high-skilled people with imagination who think up ways of enriching people that locals never would have. Remember that labor demand is elastic, not fixed. Sometimes immigrants do labor that just would not get done otherwise (California would have to import strawberries and pay more for them). The evidence is that immigration actually [pdf] benefits the host economy pretty much across the board.

If they are able to do so, labor immigrants tend to return home when the labor market contracts and there is no work for them. (This is the irony of the wall-builders in the US– they are probably forcing immigrants to stay in this country who would otherwise leave).

Let us just consider Poland. In the past 7 years, since it joined the European Union, Poland has lost 2 million residents, declining from 38 to 36 million. At least one million of those are estimated to be permanent emigrants. Most have gone to the British Isles and to Ireland.

Britain has over half a million immigrant Poles now, and they are second only to Indians as hyphenated Britons. The tabloid press has been accused of whipping up anti-Polish sentiment.

But it is baffling. Britain gained the skills of immigrant Poles without having to pay for their educations for the most part. They would not have come if they could not have found jobs that employers would hire them to fill, which means that they met a demand for labor. (Contrary to what some people believe who have not studied economics, labor demand in a society is elastic– it isn’t a zero-sum game, and the pie can expand. A zero-sum game is one where the pie stays the same size and if one person gets more of it, somebody else gets less. Half a million new Polish-British citizens might buy British-made goods and create more jobs). Poles are from a Catholic background and that might make for integration issues in largely Protestant Britain, except that I don’t think young Poles are mostly very religious. Nor are the British. As for ideology, the Poles are hardworking capitalists in this generation and one can only imagine the Margaret Thatcher types approving of them.

Even by 2006, former East Bloc immigrants to Britain were estimated to be contributing over $4 bn. a year to the British economy. The British response to this windfall? The government has now implemented a cap on the immigration of [non-EU] skilled workers that is likely to hurt economic growth! The number of high-skilled workers in a society is predictive of economic growth there, and all the countries that ever amounted to anything brought in a lot of them from abroad. Of course, it is desirable that the wealth they help create be taxed and used to educate and train people of the country for the future, as well. But, again, it is not a zero sum game. Sullen, poor, nationalist little countries that keep out foreigners seldom generate the resources to educate their own high-skilled workers and entrepreneurs, and so they stay sullen, poor, little nationalist countries.

In contrast, Poland has lost 2 million energetic, educated, mainly young people, and half of it is a long-term loss. So who has done better out of this immigration? Britain or Poland? What have the British really got to complain about here? Note that Poland could lose another million citizens permanently over the next generation. Who will support their old? Where will their productivity come from?

Poles are second only to Indians in numbers as immigrants. There are at least half a million and perhaps over a million Hindus in the UK. I am sure they face some discrimination. But I’ve never heard of loonies stocking weapons and killing people over their presence in Britain. Barry Kosmin estimated about a million in the US as I recall. Despite some Indophobia, Western host societies don’t obsess about Hindu immigrants the way they do about Muslim.

Informed comment by Professor Juan Cole. Here

The Victorian art of murder and the behaviour of Americans

The Victorians' thirst for murder - their fascination with the details, their poring over and feasting on it - mirrors western culture.

Obama, Hillary and others watching with glee the murder of Osama

Late one afternoon in the winter of 1836, a man boarded a London omnibus, carrying a soft, round object, approximately the size of a football, “wrapped up” under one arm. There was nothing about his appearance to excite suspicion. Indeed, he struck all those who saw him as placid and unremarkable. Taking his seat, he settled his luggage on his lap where it remained, held in place by its owner with perfect equanimity, for the rest of the journey. At Stepney, the passenger disembarked and walked the short distance to the canal where he disposed of his burden, hurling it, as discreetly as he was able, into the water. It floated for a second or two, as though struggling to remain in view of the world, before it sank at last beneath the surface, vanishing from sight.

The name of the traveller was James Greenacre and earlier that day he had committed murder. What he carried under his arm was the severed head of his victim – a washerwoman named Hannah Brown, who was his fiancée. Greenacre must have hoped that the canal would swallow the proof of his crime but the waters failed to keep their secret. On January 6, 1837, the head of Miss Brown was found by a lock-keeper when it came to obstruct the mechanism of which he was in charge. Brown’s torso was soon discovered, “in a horridly mutilated state”, dumped in a sack “tucked under a flagstone” on the Edgware Road, and in February “a pair of legs was dredged out of a bed of reeds near Coldharbour Lane, in Brixton”. Following the identification of the body by the victim’s brother, Greenacre was hunted down and arrested. Soon afterwards, he confessed and the crowd at his execution was apparently “large, vocal and perfectly good-humoured”. They purchased “Greenacre tarts” from a pie-seller while they waited to watch the killer swing.

In Judith Flanders’s new book, The Invention of Murder, a survey of homicide in the nineteenth century, the slaying of Hannah Brown is one of dozens of such atrocities. Here are to be found a horrifying array of “more than fifty” violent and bloody expirations – including well-known cases which have been popularized by other writers (Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, described by Oscar Wilde in “Pen, Pencil and Poison” in 1889 as a “young dandy” with “rich curly hair, fine eyes, and exquisite white hands”, who is revealed here as “short, fat, bald and with a speech defect”; the Ratcliffe Highway murders of 1811 which inspired P. D. James and T. A. Critchley’s The Maul and the Pear Tree, 1971; the murder of Francis Savile Kent, dramatized by Kate Summerscale in The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, 2008) and other less well-known cases. Here are crimes born of lust, pecuniary gain, revenge. Here are murders of servants by their masters and of masters by their servants, murders by strangers and murders by loved ones: poisonings, bludgeonings, suffocations.

Jonathan Barnes reviews the book THE INVENTION OF MURDER How the Victorians revelled in death and detection and created modern crime by Judith Flanders in The Sunday Times. Here

Tipu Sultan was the first to resist Western Imperialists

Tipu Sultan

By the end of the 90s, the hardliners calling for regime change in the east found that they had a powerful ally in government. This new president was not prepared to wait to be attacked: he was a new sort of conservative, aggressive in foreign policy, bitterly anti-French, and intent on turning his country into the unrivalled global power. It was best, he believed, simply to remove any hostile Muslim regime that presumed to resist the west.

There was no doubt who would be the first to be targeted: a Muslim dictator whose family had usurped power in a military coup. According to British sources, this chief of state was an "intolerant bigot", a "furious fanatic" with a "rooted and inveterate hatred of Europeans", who had "perpetually on his tongue the projects of jihad". He was also deemed to be "oppressive and unjust ... [a] sanguinary tyrant, [and a] perfidious negotiator".

It was, in short, time to take out Tipu Sultan of Mysore. The president of the board of control, Henry Dundas, the minister who oversaw the East India Company, had just the man for the job. Richard Wellesley was sent out to India in 1798 as governor general with specific instructions to effect regime change in Mysore and replace Tipu with a western-backed puppet. First, however, Wellesley and Dundas had to justify to the British public a policy whose outcome had long been decided in private.

Wellesley therefore began a campaign of vilification against Tipu, portraying him as an aggressive Muslim monster who divided his time between oppressing his subjects and planning to drive the British into the sea. This essay in imperial villain-making opened the way for a lucrative conquest and the installation of a more pliable regime that would, in the words of Wellesley, allow the British to give the impression they were handing the country back to its rightful owners while in reality maintaining firm control.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a politician in search of a war is not over-scrupulous with matters of fact. Until recently, the British propaganda offensive against Tipu has determined the way that we - and many Indians - remember him. But, as with more recent dossiers produced to justify pre-emptive military action against mineral-rich Muslim states, the evidence reveals far more about the desires of the attacker than it does about the reality of the attacked.

Recent work by scholars has succeeded in reconstructing a very different Tipu to the one-dimensional fanatic invented by Wellesley. Tipu, it is now clear, was one of the most innovative and far-sighted rulers of the pre-colonial period. He tried to warn other Indian rulers of the dangers of an increasingly arrogant and aggressive west. "Know you not the custom of the English?" he wrote in vain to the nizam of Hyderabad in 1796. "Wherever they fix their talons they contrive little by little to work themselves into the whole management of affairs."

What really worried the British was less that Tipu was a Muslim fanatic, something strange and alien, but that he was frighteningly familiar: a modernising technocrat who used the weapons of the west against their inventors. Indeed, in many ways, he beat them at their own game: the Mysore sepoy's flintlocks - as the examples for sale in an auction of Tipu memorabilia at Sotheby's tomorrow demonstrate - were based on the latest French designs, and were much superior to the company's old matchlocks.

Tipu also tried to import industrial technology through French engineers, and experimented with harnessing water-power to drive his machinery. He sent envoys to southern China to bring back silkworm eggs and established sericulture in Mysore - an innovation that still enriches the region today. More remarkably, he created what amounted to a state trading company with its own ships and factories dotted across the Gulf. British propaganda might portray Tipu as a savage barbarian, but he was something of a connoisseur, with a library of about 2,000 volumes in several languages.

Moreover, contrary to the propaganda of the British, Tipu - far from being some sort of fundamentalist - continued the Indo-Islamic tradition of syncretism. He certainly destroyed temples in Hindu states that he conquered in war, but temples lying within his domains were viewed as protected state property and generously supported with lands and gifts of money and even padshah lingams - a unique case of a Muslim sultan facilitating the Shaivite phallus veneration. When the great Sringeri temple was destroyed by a Maratha raiding party, Tipu sent funds for its rebuilding. "People who have sinned against such a holy place," wrote a solicitous Tipu, "are sure soon to suffer the consequences of their misdeeds."

Tipu knew what he was risking when he took on the British, but he said, "I would rather live a day as a tiger than a lifetime as a sheep." As the objects in tomorrow's sale show, the culture of innovation Tipu fostered in Mysore stands record to a man very different from that imagined by the Islamophobic propaganda of the British - and the startling inaccuracy of Wellesley's "dodgy dossier" of 1799. The fanatical bigot and savage was in fact an intellectual.

The whole episode is a sobering reminder of the degree to which old-style imperialism has made a comeback under Bush and Blair. There is nothing new about the neocons. Not only are westerners again playing their old game of installing puppet regimes, propped up by western garrisons, for their own political and economic ends but, more alarmingly, the intellectual attitudes that buttressed and sustained such imperial adventures remain intact.

Old style Orientalism is alive and kicking, its prejudices intact, with columnists such as Mark Steyn and Andrew Sullivan in the role of the new Mills and Macaulays. Through their pens - blissfully unencumbered by any knowledge of the Muslim world - the old colonial idea of the Islamic ruler as the decadent, destructive, degenerate Oriental despot lives on and, as before, it is effortlessly projected on a credulous public by western warmongers in order to justify their own imperial projects. Dundas and Wellesley were certainly more intelligent and articulate than Bush or Rumsfeld, but they were no less cynical in their aims, nor less ruthless in the means they employed to effect them.

William Dalrymple in The Guardian. More Here

Why I Shed Bikini for Niqab: The New Symbol of Women's Liberation

I find it to be a blatant hypocrisy when Western governments and so-called human rights groups rush to defend woman's rights when some governments impose a certain dress code on women, yet such "freedom fighters" look the other way when women are being deprived of their rights, work, and education just because they choose to exercise their right to wear Niqab or Hijab. Today, women in Hijab or Niqab are being increasingly barred from work and education not only under totalitarian regimes such as in Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt, but also in Western democracies such as France, Holland, and Britain.

Today I am still a feminist, but a Muslim feminist, who calls on Muslim women to assume their responsibilities in providing all the support they can for their husbands to be good Muslims. To raise their children as upright Muslims so they may be beacons of light for all humanity once again. To enjoin good--any good--and to forbid evil--any evil. To speak righteousness and to speak up against all ills. To fight for our right to wear Niqab or Hijab and to please our Creator whichever way we chose. But just as importantly to carry our experience with Niqab or Hijab to fellow women who may never have had the chance to understand what wearing Niqab or Hijab means to us and why do we, so dearly, embrace it.

 
Most of the women I know wearing Niqab are Western reverts, some of whom are not even married. Others wear Niqab without full support of either family or surroundings. What we all have in common is that it is the personal choice of each and every one of us, which none of us is willing to surrender.

Willingly or unwillingly, women are bombarded with styles of "dressing-in-little-to-nothing" virtually in every means of communication everywhere in the world. As an ex non-Muslim, I insist on women's right to equally know about Hijab, its virtues, and the peace and happiness it brings to a woman's life as it did to mine. 

Yesterday, the bikini was the symbol of my liberty, when in actuality it only liberated me from my spirituality and true value as a respectable human being.

I couldn't be happier to shed my bikini in South Beach and the "glamorous" Western lifestyle to live in peace with my Creator and enjoy living among fellow humans as a worthy person. It is why I choose to wear Niqab, and why I will die defending my inalienable right to wear it. Today, Niqab is the new symbol of woman's liberation.

To women who surrender to the ugly stereotype against the Islamic modesty of Hijab, I say: You don't know what you are missing.

Sara Bokker is a former actress/model/fitness instructor and activist. Currently, Sara is Director of Communications at "The March For Justice," a co-founder of "The Global Sisters Network," and producer of the infamous "Shock & Awe Gallery."

Sara Bokker in Albalagh. More Here

Beware of American games in Libya

It is natural for us to be skeptical when the West demonizes a Muslim leader. He automatically gets the benefit of our doubt but in this case evidence against him is abundant. He forced Wahdah (unification), first on Egypt then on Tunisia. When the Arab countries did not show any interest, he turned towards Sub-Saharan Africa and wanted to lead her in a United States of Africa. That dream also did not materialize.

He tried to purchase an atom bomb from China. Spurned by Zhou En-Lai, he turned towards Pakistan. When Pakistan too said no, he became very bitter. He ordered Egyptian navy during the period of unification, to sink the luxury ocean liner QE2, full of American tourists, in the Mediterranean. The naval commander would not do it without referring to Sadat.

There were reports that he asked Nasser permission to shoot King Husain in an Arab summit conference in Cairo. It is also a known fact that he sent assassins to kill King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. The blowing up of the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie in Scotland is another example of bizarre behavior.

Then all of a sudden he metamorphosed from Mr. Hyde to Dr. Jekyll and became from enemy number one to the best friend of the West, meeting with Condoleezza Rice and embracing Gordon Brown, Sarkozy and Berlusconi.

We need no further evidence to conclude that autocracy, whether benevolent or tyrannical, is something we must not tolerate in the Muslim world. It will certainly be inimical to human development. My experience of the Libyan people is that they are very sweet, friendly and full of promise. They deserve a better leadership. 

However, there is a real danger now that the upheaval in the Arab countries may once again provide entries to Trojan Horses — I am not talking about Islamists — and usher in another era of exploitation. The Revolutions must be on their guard against such hazards.

Waheeduddin Ahmed in The Muslim Observer. More Here.

So why are the neocons uneasy?

One cannot but note the "miraculous" nature of the events in Egypt: something has happened that few predicted, violating the experts' opinions, as if the uprising was not simply the result of social causes but the intervention of a mysterious agency that we can call, in a Platonic way, the eternal idea of freedom, justice and dignity.

The uprising was universal: it was immediately possible for all of us around the world to identify with it, to recognise what it was about, without any need for cultural analysis of the features of Egyptian society. In contrast to Iran's Khomeini revolution (where leftists had to smuggle their message into the predominantly Islamist frame), here the frame is clearly that of a universal secular call for freedom and justice, so that the Muslim Brotherhood had to adopt the language of secular demands.

The most sublime moment occurred when Muslims and Coptic Christians engaged in common prayer on Cairo's Tahrir Square, chanting "We are one!" – providing the best answer to the sectarian religious violence.

Those neocons who criticise multiculturalism on behalf of the universal values of freedom and democracy are now confronting their moment of truth: you want universal freedom and democracy? This is what people demand in Egypt, so why are the neocons uneasy? Is it because the protesters in Egypt mention freedom and dignity in the same breath as social and economic justice?

From the start, the violence of the protesters has been purely symbolic, an act of radical and collective civil disobedience. They suspended the authority of the state – it was not just an inner liberation, but a social act of breaking chains of servitude. The physical violence was done by the hired Mubarak thugs entering Tahrir Square on horses and camels and beating people; the most protesters did was defend themselves.

Although combative, the message of the protesters has not been one of killing. The demand was for Mubarak to go, and thus open up the space for freedom in Egypt, a freedom from which no one is excluded – the protesters' call to the army, and even the hated police, was not "Death to you!", but "We are brothers! Join us!". This feature clearly distinguishes an emancipatory demonstration from a rightwing populist one: although the right's mobilisation proclaims the organic unity of the people, it is a unity sustained by a call to annihilate the designated enemy (Jews, traitors).

So where are we now? When an authoritarian regime approaches the final crisis, its dissolution tends to follow two steps. Before its actual collapse, a rupture takes place: all of a sudden people know that the game is over, they are simply no longer afraid. It is not only that the regime loses its legitimacy; its exercise of power itself is perceived as an impotent panic reaction. We all know the classic scene from cartoons: the cat reaches a precipice but goes on walking, ignoring the fact that there is no ground under its feet; it starts to fall only when it looks down and notices the abyss. When it loses its authority, the regime is like a cat above the precipice: in order to fall, it only has to be reminded to look down …

Egypt's struggle of endurance is not a conflict of visions, it is the conflict between a vision of freedom and a blind clinging to power that uses all means possible – terror, lack of food, simple tiredness, bribery with raised salaries – to squash the will to freedom.

When President Obama welcomed the uprising as a legitimate expression of opinion that needs to be acknowledged by the government, the confusion was total: the crowds in Cairo and Alexandria did not want their demands to be acknowledged by the government, they denied the very legitimacy of the government. They didn't want the Mubarak regime as a partner in a dialogue, they wanted Mubarak to go. They didn't simply want a new government that would listen to their opinion, they wanted to reshape the entire state. They don't have an opinion, they are the truth of the situation in Egypt. Mubarak understands this much better than Obama: there is no room for compromise here, as there was none when the Communist regimes were challenged in the late 1980s. Either the entire Mubarak power edifice falls down, or the uprising is co-opted and betrayed.

And what about the fear that, after the fall of Mubarak, the new government will be hostile towards Israel? If the new government is genuinely the expression of a people that proudly enjoys its freedom, then there is nothing to fear: antisemitism can only grow in conditions of despair and oppression. (A CNN report from an Egyptian province showed how the government is spreading rumours there that the organisers of the protests and foreign journalists were sent by the Jews to weaken Egypt – so much for Mubarak as a friend of the Jews.)

One of the cruellest ironies of the current situation is the west's concern that the transition should proceed in a "lawful" way – as if Egypt had the rule of law until now. Are we already forgetting that, for many long years, Egypt was in a permanent state of emergency? Mubarak suspended the rule of law, keeping the entire country in a state of political immobility, stifling genuine political life. It makes sense that so many people on the streets of Cairo claim that they now feel alive for the first time in their lives. Whatever happens next, what is crucial is that this sense of "feeling alive" is not buried by cynical realpolitik.

From Slavoj Zizek's write-up in Commondreams. More Here.

Western values, David Cameron and Islam

David Cameron has said that Muslims living in the West must abide by Western “values'' of tolerance, free speech and respect for women's rights. Arguing that “passive'' multiculturalism that allowed minority groups not to integrate had failed, Mr. Cameron said: “Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism.”

He proposed a social boycott of separatist Muslim groups urging Ministers to refuse to share platforms or engage with them. They should also be denied access to public money in what was seen as a veiled reference to the previous Labour government's policy of wooing Muslim groups with funds.

“Let's properly judge these organisations: Do they believe in universal human rights — including for women and people of other faiths? Do they believe in equality of all before the law? Do they believe in democracy and the right of people to elect their own government? Do they encourage integration or separatism? These are the sorts of questions we need to ask. Fail these tests and the presumption should be not to engage with organisations,” he added. Though Mr. Cameron took care to make a distinction between the religion of Islam and the political ideology of Islamist extremism saying it was wrong to link strong religious faith with radicalism, his remarks drew criticism from Muslim groups. The Muslim Council of Britain accused him of “targeting'' the Muslim community.

“Again it seems the Muslim community is being treated as part of the problem rather than part of the solution,” a spokesperson said.

Some Labour MPs and rights activists questioned the timing of Mr. Cameron's remarks which coincided with an aggressive march by the far-right English Defence League in the Muslim-dominated town of Luton against “Islamisation'' of Britain. 

From a report in The Hindu. More Here.

Muslim Brotherhood is not a radical movement

To help explain the thrilling developments in Egypt, Farooq Sulehria interviewed leading Arab scholar-activist Gilbert Achcar on February 4.

Do you think that Mubarak's pledge on February 1st not to contest the next election represented a victory for the movement, or was it just a trick to calm down the masses as on the very next day demonstrators in Al-Tahrir Square were brutally attacked by pro-Mubarak forces?

The Egyptian popular anti-regime uprising reached a first peak on February 1st, prodding Mubarak to announce concessions in the evening. It was an acknowledgement of the force of the popular protest and a clear retreat on the autocrat's part, coming on top of the announcement of the government's willingness to negotiate with the opposition. These were significant concessions indeed coming from such an authoritarian regime, and a testimony to the importance of the popular mobilisation. Mubarak even pledged to speed up ongoing judicial actions against fraud perpetrated during the previous parliamentary elections.

He made it clear, however, that he was not willing to go beyond that. With the army firmly on his side, he was trying to appease the mass movement, as well as the Western powers that were urging him to reform the political system. Short of resignation, he granted some of the key demands that the Egyptian protest movement had formulated initially, when it launched its campaign on January 25. However, the movement has radicalized since that day to a point where anything short of Mubarak's resignation won't be enough to satisfy it, with many in the movement even demanding that he gets tried in court.

Moreover, all the regime's key institutions are now denounced by the movement as illegitimate––the executive as well as the legislative, i.e. the parliament. As a result, part of the opposition is demanding that the head of the constitutional court be appointed as interim president, to preside over the election of a constituent assembly. Others even want a national committee of opposition forces to supervise the transition. Of course, these demands constitute a radical democratic perspective. In order to impose such a thorough change, the mass movement would need to break or destabilise the regime's backbone, that is the Egyptian army.

Do you mean that the Egyptian army is backing Mubarak?

Egypt––even more than comparable countries such as Pakistan or Turkey––is in essence a military dictatorship with a civilian façade that is itself stuffed with men originating in the military. The problem is that most of the Egyptian opposition, starting with the Muslim Brotherhood, have been sowing illusions about the army and its purported "neutrality," if not "benevolence." They have been depicting the army as an honest broker, while the truth is that the army as an institution is not "neutral" at all. If it has not been used yet to repress the movement, it is only because Mubarak and the general staff did not see it appropriate to resort to such a move, probably because they fear that the soldiers would be reluctant to carry out a repression. That is why the regime resorted instead to orchestrating counter-demonstrations and attacks by thugs on the protest movement. The regime tried to set up a semblance of civil strife, showing Egypt as torn apart between two camps, thus creating a justification for the army's intervention as the "arbiter" of the situation.

If the regime managed to mobilise a significant counter-movement and provoke clashes on a larger scale, the army could step in, saying: "Game over, everybody must go home now," while promising that the pledges made by Mubarak would be implemented. Like many observers, I feared these last two days that this stratagem might succeed in weakening the protest movement, but the huge mobilization of today's "day of departure" is reassuring. The army will need to make further and more significant concessions to the popular uprising.

When you talk of the opposition, what forces does it include? Of course, we hear about the Muslim Brotherhood and El Baradei. Are there are other players too like left wing forces, trade unions, etc?

The Egyptian opposition includes a vast array of forces. There are parties like the Wafd, which are legal parties and constitute what may be called the liberal opposition. Then there is a grey zone occupied by the Muslim Brotherhood. It does not have a legal status but is tolerated by the regime. Its whole structure is visible; it is not an underground force. The Muslim Brotherhood is certainly, and by far, the largest force in the opposition. When Mubarak's regime, under US pressure, granted some space to the opposition in the 2005 parliamentary elections, the Muslim Brotherhood––running as "independents"––managed to get 88 MPs, i.e. 20 percent of the parliamentary seats, despite all obstacles. In the last elections held last November and December, after the Mubarak regime had decided to close down the limited space that it had opened in 2005, the Muslim Brotherhood almost vanished from parliament, losing all its seats but one.

Among the forces on the left, the largest is the Tagammu party, which enjoys a legal status and has 5 MPs. It refers to the Nasserite legacy. Communists have been prominent within its ranks. It is basically a reformist left party, which is not considered a threat to the regime. On the contrary, it has been quite compliant with it on several occasions. There are also leftwing Nasserite and radical left groups in Egypt––small but vibrant, and very much involved in the mass movement.

Then there are "civil society" movements, like Kefaya, a coalition of activists from various opposition forces initiated in solidarity with the Second Palestinian Intifada in 2000. It opposed the invasion of Iraq later on, and became famous afterwards as a democratic campaign movement against Mubarak's regime. From 2006 to 2009, Egypt saw the unfolding of a wave of industrial actions, including a few impressively massive workers strikes. There are no independent workers unions in Egypt, with one or two very recent exceptions born as a result of the social radicalisation. The bulk of the working class does not have the benefit of autonomous representation and organization. An attempt at convening a general strike on April 6, 2008 in solidarity with the workers led to the creation of the April 6 Youth Movement. Associations like this one and Kefaya are campaign-focused groups, not political parties, and they include people of different political affiliations along with unaffiliated activists.

When Mohamed El Baradei returned to Egypt in 2009 after his third term at the head of the IAEA, his personal prestige enhanced by the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, a liberal and left coalition gathered around him, with the Muslim Brotherhood adopting a lukewarm reserved position. Many in the opposition saw El Baradei as a powerful candidate enjoying international reputation and connections, and constituting therefore a credible presidential candidate against Mubarak or his son. El Baradei thus became a rallying figure for a large section of the opposition, regrouping political forces as well as personalities. They formed the National Association for Change.

This whole array of forces is very much involved in the present uprising. However, the overwhelming majority of the people on the streets are without any sort of political affiliation. It is a huge mass outpouring of resentment at living under a despotic regime, fed by worsening economic conditions, as prices of basic necessities, like food, fuel, and electricity, have been sharply on the rise amid staggering joblessness. This is the case not only in Egypt but in most of the region as well, and that is why the fire of revolt that started in Tunisia spread so quickly to many Arab countries.

Is El Baradei genuinely popular, or is he in some way the Mir-Hossein Mousavi of the Egyptian movement, trying to change some faces while preserving the regime?

I would disagree with this characterisation of Mousavi in the first place. To be sure, Mir-Hossein Mousavi did not want to "change the regime" if one mean by that a social revolution. But there was definitely a clash between authoritarian social forces, spearheaded by the Pasdaran and represented by Ahmedinejad, and others coalesced around a liberal reformist perspective represented by Mousavi. It was indeed a clash about the kind of "regime" in the sense of the pattern of political rule.

Mohamed El Baradei is a genuine liberal who wishes his country to move from the present dictatorship to a liberal democratic regime, with free elections and political freedoms. If such a vast array of political forces is willing to cooperate with him, it is because they see in him the most credible liberal alternative to the existing regime, a man who does not command an organised constituency of his own, and is therefore an appropriate figurehead for a democratic change.

Going back to your analogy, you can't compare him with Mousavi who was a member of the Iranian regime, one of the men who led the 1979 Islamic revolution. Mousavi had his own followers in Iran, before he emerged as the leader of the 2009 mass protest movement. In Egypt, El Baradei cannot play, and does not pretend to play a similar role. He is supported by a vast array of forces, but none of them see him as its leader.

The Muslim Brotherhood's initial reserved attitude towards El Baradei is partly related to the fact that he does not have a religious bent and is too secular for their taste. Moreover, the Muslim Brotherhood had cultivated an ambiguous relationship with the regime over the years. Had they fully backed El Baradei, they would have narrowed their margin of negotiation with the Mubarak regime, with which they have been bargaining for quite a long time. The regime conceded a lot to them in the socio-cultural sphere, increasing  Islamic censorship in the cultural field being but one example. That was the easiest thing the regime could do to appease the Brotherhood. As a result, Egypt made huge steps backward from the secularisation that was consolidated under Gamal Abdul-Nasser in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Muslim Brotherhood's goal is to secure a democratic change that would grant them the possibility to take part in free elections, both parliamentary and presidential. The model they aspire to reproduce in Egypt is that of Turkey, where the democratisation process was controlled by the military with the army remaining a key pillar of the political system. This process nonetheless created a space which allowed the AKP, an Islamic conservative party, to win elections. They are not bent on overthrowing the state, hence their courting of the military and their care to avoid any gesture that could antagonize the army. They adhere to a strategy of gradual conquest of power: they are gradualists, not radicals.

From Gilbert Achcar's Zspace page. More Here

Everest team forced to leave sick British climber to die

At one o'clock in the afternoon, the British climber Peter Kinloch was on the roof of the world, in bright sunlight, taking photographs of the Himalayas below, "elated, cheery and bubbly".

But Mount Everest is now his grave, because only minutes later, he suddenly went blind and had to be abandoned to die from the cold.

As the team descended, Mr Kinloch's guides noticed that he seemed to lose co-ordination. He would slip and stumble, then resume walking normally. After an hour, he made a surprising request to the team leader, David O'Brien, to be shown how to get down the ladders. At first he said he was having difficulty seeing, then he admitted that he could not see anything.

It took four hours for Mr O'Brien and a sherpa to help the stricken climber down to Mushroom Rock, barely 1,000ft below the summit. Two more sherpas arrived and for the next eight hours they all struggled to bring Mr Kinloch,28, down the mountain, administering drugs and oxygen. But they were now dangerously close to needing rescue themselves, and had to abandon him and struggled back into camp at 5.30am, exhausted and suffering from hypothermia and frostbite.

Mr Kinloch's body is still in Mount Everest's "death zone" and may never be recovered. He is the 30th climber to die on the mountain in the past five years. He died last Wednesday but the news was made public only yesterday, on the EverestNews website.

"Peter seemed to be a fit young Scotsman with an interesting life of experiences," one of his fellow climbers wrote. "On the way up the final obstacles, Peter was in good spirits, moving steadily and sure-footedly together with our team. Everyone was in fine spirits and good health.

"On the summit Peter was elated cheery and bubbly. Earlier, during the expedition, while dining with the team, he had said that climbing Everest would be the realisation of a dream. While standing atop Everest, Peter took summit photos with the team. Conditions were sunny, but extremely cold, windy, with blowing snow."

The IT specialist, who worked for Merseyside Police, had an ambition to climb the highest peak on each of the seven continents. He had conquered four. Everest, at 29,035ft, was the fifth. After that, he planned to tackle Carstensz Pyramid in Indonesia and Mount Vinson in Antarctica. His plan was that on every summit he would wear the team hat of Inverness Caledonian Thistle FC. He was using the climbs to raise awareness for the charity OCD Action, which aids people with obsessive compulsive disorder.

Dangers at Altitude

* Retinal haemorrhages – bleeding from the cells at the back of the eye – are a relatively common complaint of mountain climbers. High altitude causes the blood to thicken, increasing blood pressure, which can lead to the seepage of blood from cells into surrounding tissues.

* Some researchers have found that more than a quarter of climbers on an Everest expedition are affected by retinal haemorrhages. Normally, they are minor, with no noticeable effect on vision, and resolve themselves within weeks of a return to low altitudes. But in Peter Kinloch's case it appears the effects were acute and extreme, causing total loss of vision, which led to deadly consequences.

From Andy McSmith's article in The Independent 

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Peter Kinloch is not the first climber to die at that snow laden mountains. Climbers have been dying there season after season. Way back in 2006 another mountaineer David Sharp was left to die there. When David Sharp was struggling with his life 40 climbers passed by. Nobody made any attempt to rescue him. For those climbers conquering Everest was paramount than saving a man struggling to live.
The callous behaviour of the climbers is not something new. The western civilisation is notorious for this attitude.

Allama Iqbal in his famous Madras lectures mentions one such instance. It was about a raging debate going on and on in one of the European dailies at those times. The daily had asked its readers to express their views in a touchy subject.

The Daily declared in its first page : "Let us assume that a big fire erupts in the historic museum. In a critical situation it so happens that an infant got caught in a room engulfed with fire. There was also a precious, timeless painting of great personality. You could here the wails of the crying infant too. But there is a twist. The fire fighters were in a position to save either the crying infant or the precious painting. They cannot save both. What should be the choice of the fire fighters? What would you do in such a situation?". Readers were asked to respond to this query.

The daily was flooded with hundreds of letters. Allama Iqbal laments that majority of them were in favour of rescuing the precious painting. Their line of thinking was, "You could always give birth to a child. But from where the hell could you bring such a priceless painting?". Allama Iqbal asserts that a Muslim's choice would always be to save other human beings. The Holy Quran declares that "He who saves a life shall be as if he had given life to all mankind" (5 : 32).

But for the western society a painting was more precious than a human life. This callous attitude shows itself time and again. The fact that David Sharp was left to die there and not even one of those 40 climbers prefered to help him over their desire to conquer the peak is an ample testimony to this bitter truth. God bless the mankind.