[FISKING] Siddiqui on Ontario and sharia

This is the first fisking of an article this year. So far as I remember, my last fisking of an article was done in March 2003. Still, when I read Haroon Siddiqui's article "Global issues, agendas colour sharia debate", published in the Sunday, June 13th edition of the Toronto Star, page F1 in the print edition, I felt that I just had to do it.

* * *

"Nobody thinks the extreme sections of sharia will be carried out. But still, if Canada accepts this, it means it will give credibility to the sharia law around the world."

That admission by Sheila Ayala of the Humanist Association of Canada shows how the emotional debate on the proposed religious arbitration for Muslims is not about Ontario alone.

For starters, it's interesting to note how Siddiqui begins by defining the debate as "emotional." In Siddiqui's reading of the debate, emotion isn't merely a background feature of the debate, nor is it one foreground feature among many. No, the debate itself is "emotional," raising the question in Siddiqui's readers' minds of whether or not emotion is overriding the good judgement of one side or the other. And guess which side of the debate is excessively emotional?

( Time for some fun. )

I know that Siddiqui's arguing a particular point. It would just be nice if he'd concede that his opponents aren't either anti-Muslim bigots or weak-minded Muslims. Intellectual honesty is always nice in commentators.

( Counter )

[QUIZ] Via gridlore

My japanese name is 猿渡 Saruwatari (monkey on a crossing bridge) 一真 Kazuma (one reality).
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Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.

[BRIEF NOTE] More on "Hot Room"

Last month, I made a note on Linda Tiga's song "Hot Room". I included what I thought were the lyrics, and invited corrections. Now, thankfully, I've gotten one, for here the correct lyrics are.

Butterflies coming out of a hot room
white thighs hanging there in fruit of the loom
my new disguise I hide away in this cocoon
butterflies coming out of a hot room

a plate of meatballs caught on fire
my inspiration is getting higher
pay attention did I forget to mention
a plate of meatballs caught on fire

you see, freedom's an idea that cannot be
measured
am I getting through to what I thought was
treasure
freedom's an idea that cannot be
measured
am I getting through to what I thought was
treasure

back in moscow it was still illegal
her eyes were closed so that made it better
her line was long underneath her sweater
back in Moscow it was still illegal

you see, freedom's an idea that cannot be
measured
am I getting through to what I thought was
treasure
freedom's an idea that cannot be
measured
am I getting through to what I thought was
treasure

okay

[BRIEF NOTE] The New Yahoo Mail

This morning, I couldn't access my Yahoo Mail accounts. It's only just now that I've realized that Yahoo Mail has completed its long-awaited expansion of the storage capacity available to its users. Since I'm a free user, that means that I can only store 100 megabytes now, up from 4.0 previously.

I have to admit that Google's new Gmail service doesn't attract me. I don't want to knock it, having not used it and having read thehollow rejoice at getting and account today, but I've already got five E-mail addresses (one with Queen's, two with Yahoo.ca, two with Hotmail). The extra storage capacity of Gmail is nice, I suppose, but I can't see a need to archive a gigabyte worth of data coming up for me.

And how is the new Yahoo Mail? Pretty much the same as it has always been, save that my messages and attachments no longer take up 37% of my inbox and they've given Yahoo Mail a new look that I don't like.

[REVIEW] The Japan That Never Was

A CD I'd ordered--Sinéad O'Connor's Troy (The Phoenix From The Flame) Remixes--came in today. I think I'm really fond of Sinéad.

Regardless of the music I'm listening to, I feel that I should present to my readership the last academic-type book that I'll be reading through my connections with higher education for quite some time. The Japan That Never Was: Explaining the Rise and Decline of a Misunderstood Country, by Dick Beason and Dennis Patterson (Albany NY: SUNY Press, 2004), examines the questions of just how Japan managed its remarkable economic boom until 1991 yet has suffered a severe slump since the pricking of the Nikkei stock-prices bubble, and of whether or not its unusual economic trajectory stems from innate differences in Japanese political culture. Beason and Patterson's conclusion? That Japan is a normal country, with a bureaucracy that, in responding to the electoral concerns of the Liberal Democratic Party, distorted and slowed economic growth somewhat through the adoption of an industrial policy. When Japan's post-war economic model encountered serious problems in the early 1990s, owing to the overexposure of Japanese banks in excessive investments in overpriced property, the Japanese political system was unable to respond, since the Liberal Democratic Party, declining in strength, depended heavily upon the beneficiaries of the country's industrial policy and couldn't afford to alienate them with reforms. Thus, the past decade's economic stasis.

It's a simple enough thesis, but it's quite well-sourced and plausible. (The writing style is a bit iffy, with too many commas where they shouldn't be, but we'll let that pass. Everyone needs an editor, right?) Most importantly, The Japan That Never Was doesn't fetishize Japan's various differences. Rather, it makes a compelling case that despite Japan's real and significant cultural distinctiveness, it's still a technologically advanced First World country with a well-educated and prosperous citizenry and a growing post-industrial economy, and as such it's constrained to evolve along certain paths. In its own quiet way, The Japan That Never Was is, in its own quiet way, one of the most complete demolitions of the concept of Asian values and radical Asian difference from the West that I've read.