Fact Junction

Saturday, March 17, 2018

What would happen if all Muslims vanished from earth?

War, on a scale not seen since WW2.

https://www.amazon.in/dp/B07DP2YY5B/ref=cm_sw_r_wa_apa_i_IKrCBbD1W1D4E

Much of the Middle East and Northern Africa would be almost totally depopulated. India would likely move to take over Pakistan and Bangladesh; Israel would happily take over Palestine and possibly some neighboring territories.

Russia would move to take over much of the Middle East, although Turkey, as a NATO nation, would probably be safe. The US may or may not be able to block complete takeover of the Arabian peninsula and/or Iraq. China may take some actions to rein in Russia’s expansion.

North Africa is a hard one to call; Sudan would be taken over by its Southern population. Israel would likely take over the Suez canal, but I don’t believe they would try to take over Egypt as a whole. I would guess that Europe might choose to briefly open a new age of colonialism.

Indonesia, as an island nation, is an odd case. Its population is enormous, and even with all Muslims removed would still be over 30 million. I believe it would remain intact, after a period of disruption.

Acts of radical terrorism would drop. Racist ideologues would have to find a new target, with a small but significant political impact. Some people would take the disappearance as a sign that Muslims had been taken by Allah, and the Muslim faith, with the evidence of a genuine miracle, would likely start again.

The relationship between Muslim men and their beards is a tangled one

Facial hair has long been a defining visual aspect of Islam, but in recent years other sectors of society have co-opted the look

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Beards have long been in fashion among Muslim men, as can be seen in this mid-19th-century ceramic portrait of the religious and political advisers of Nasser al-Din, the king of Persia from 1848 until 1896. Photograph: Alamy

When I studied Arabic in Damascus during the summer of 1999, my fellow students would often tell me I was going to hell. My crime? I was a bad Muslim for trimming my beard. While many of the guys at this all-male institution had big, bushy beards, mine was more like designer stubble.

When I asked them why they didn’t shave, the majority would talk about imitating the prophet Muhammad. Many were also attempting to be as “manly” as possible. Mostly white western converts, they seemed to identify beards with Islam.

They’re not the only ones. Just a few days ago the Right Rev Richard Chartres, the Anglican bishop of London, praised bearded vicars for reaching out to Muslims. Last year in Tajikistan, meanwhile, police shaved off the beards of almost 13,000 men in a bid to stamp out what the authorities deemed “radicalisation”. The battle against “foreign” influences also led to the closure of more than 160 shops selling traditional Muslim clothing. The year before, the Chinese city of Karamay had banned men with big beards or Islamic clothing from its buses.

Such is the panic about “Muslim” beards in some quarters that last October Swedish police were called out to investigate an innocuous group of hipsters known as the Bearded Villains. Apparently a member of the public thought their black and white flag was the emblem of Islamic State.

The association between beards and Islam goes right back to Muhammad himself, who is said to have sported a beard, although the Qur’an says nothing about facial hair specifically. From the beginning, faith was intertwined with rigid notions of masculinity: Muhammad’s disciple Ibn Abbas reported that the prophet “cursed those men who assume the manners of women and those women who assume those of men”. For men, the beard was said to be a part of the “fitrah” – the natural order.

Even today, those who seek to uphold a political form of Islam find it easier to do so by strictly policing gender and sexuality. Boys should be boys, in their minds, and one way to make sure of that is to make them grow beards.

This attitude has created a great deal of pain among those who do not fit in, not least transgender Muslims. But it has not gone unopposed, even among the devout. South Asia’s antinomian mystics are probably the biggest challenge to this rigid world view. They often wear women’s clothing and jewellery, have big long beards and dance at the shrines of their Sufi masters. They state that they are the brides of God and this is their submission to God. Many identify as heterosexual. This certainly complicates any ideal of bearded Islamic masculinity.

Beyond the Muslim world, the link between hairiness and manliness has also been turned on its head. Even before urban hipsters fell for the lumberjack look, queer culture was embracing “bears” – large, rugged men with hirsute chests and bushy beards. In another blow to the stereotype, last Christmas beard-owners were widely encouraged to decorate them with oil and glitter. If you needed help, you could watch a helpful video from two men known as the Gay Beards.

I can’t help but think that those who seek rigid masculine and feminine portrayals of the Muslim man and woman must be extremely frustrated. However the beard started out, it has now grown into something very different.

Since you’re here …

… we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. So you can see why we need to ask for your help. The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters – because it might well be your perspective, too.

I appreciate there not being a paywall: it is more democratic for the media to be available for all and not a commodity to be purchased by a few. I’m happy to make a contribution so others with less means still have access to information.Thomasine F-R.

BENGALI THE LANGUAGE

Bengali language, Bengali Bangla, member of the Indo-Aryan group of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is spoken by more than 210 million people as a first or second language, with some 100 million Bengali speakers in Bangladesh; about 85 million in India, primarily in the states of West Bengal, Assam, and Tripura; and sizable immigrant communities in the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Middle East. It is the state language of Bangladesh and one of the languages officially recognized in the constitution of India.

History

There is general agreement that in the distant past Oriya, Assamese, and Bengali formed a single branch, from which Oriya split off first and Assamese later. This is one reason that the earliest specimens of Bengali language and literature, the Charyapadas (Buddhist mystic songs), are also claimed by speakers of Oriya and Assamese as their own.

The Bengali linguists Suniti Kumar Chatterji and Sukumar Sen suggested that Bengali had its origin in the 10th century CE, deriving from Magahi Prakrit (a spoken language) through Magahi Apabhramsha(its written counterpart). The Bengali scholar Muhammad Shahidullah and his followers offered a competing theory, suggesting that the language began in the 7th century CE and developed from spoken and written Gauda (also, respectively, a Prakrit and an Apabhramsha).

Although Bengali is an Indo-European language, it has been influenced by other language families prevalent in South Asia, notably the Dravidian, the Austroasiatic, and the Tibeto-Burman families, all of which contributed to Bengali vocabulary and provided the language with some structural forms. In the 1960s and ’70s, Chatterji examined dictionaries from the early 20th century and attributed slightly more than half of the Bengali vocabulary to native words (i.e., naturally modified Sanskrit words, corrupted forms of Sanskrit words, and loanwords from non-Indo-European languages), about 45 percent to unmodified Sanskrit words, and the remainder to foreign words. Dominant in the last group was Persian, which was also the source of some grammatical forms. More recent studies suggest that the use of native and foreign words has been increasing, mainly because of the preference of Bengali speakers for the colloquial style.

Varieties

There are two standard styles in Bengali: the Sadhubhasa (elegant or genteel speech) and the Chaltibhasa (current or colloquial speech). The former was largely shaped by the language of early Bengali poetical works. In the 19th century it became standardized as the literary language and also as the appropriate vehicle for business and personal exchanges. Although it was at times used for oration, Sadhubhasa was not the language of daily communication.

Chaltibhasa is based on the cultivated form of the dialects of Kolkata(Calcutta) and its neighbouring small towns on the Bhagirathi River. It has come into literary use since the early 20th century, and by the early 21st century it had become the dominant literary language as well as the standard colloquial form of speech among the educated. The pronouns and verb forms of the Sadhubhasa are contracted in Chaltibhasa. There is also a marked difference in vocabulary.

Although distinctions in the use of Bengali are associated with social class, educational level, and religion, the greatest differences are regional. The four main dialects roughly approximate the ancient political divisions of the Bengali-speaking world, known as Radha (West Bengal proper); Pundra, or Varendra (the northern parts of West Bengal and Bangladesh); Kamrupa (northeastern Bangladesh); and Bangla (the dialects of the rest of Bangladesh; see also Bangladesh: history). In addition, two cities, Sylhet and Chittagong, have developed dialects with lexical and phonological characteristics that are mostly unintelligible to other speakers of Bengali.

Grammar

A simple Bengali sentence usually follows subject–object–verb word order. When present, the negative particle comes at the end of the sentence. The copula, or verb linking the subject and predicate, is often omitted. Six cases are generally recognized. Compound verbs, comprising a stem or root and a suffix, are a special feature. There are 3 verb tenses, but their subdivisions make them 10. There are two moods, indicative and imperative, and two numbers, singular and plural. The first, second, and third persons are expressed through six forms because they have both ordinary and honorific referents. Gender is natural, and there is no special declension for feminine and neuter. Adjectives are usually not modified according to the number or case of the nouns they qualify.

Writing Systems

The Bengali script is derived from Brahmi, one of the two ancient Indian scripts, and particularly from the eastern variety of Brahmi. Bengali script followed a different line of development from that of Devanagariand Oriyan scripts, but the characters of Bengali and Assamese scripts generally coincided. By the 12th century CE the Bengali alphabet was nearly complete, although natural changes continued to take place until the 16th century. Some conscious alterations were also made in the 19th century.

Bengali is written from left to right. There are no capital letters. The script is characterized by many conjuncts, upstrokes, downstrokes, and other features that hang from a horizontal line. The punctuation marks, save one, are all taken from 19th-century English.

Bengali spelling was more or less standardized through a set of reforms that were initiated by the University of Calcutta in 1936. However, the standardization process continued throughout the 20th and into the early 21st century. For instance, the Bangla Academy in Dhaka prefers a set of alternatives offered by the 1936 reforms, while the Bangla Academy in West Bengal has proposed new reforms. Visva-Bharati, the university founded by the Bengali poet and Nobelist Rabindranath Tagore, has also effected several spelling variations. Finally, some newspapers and publishers have their own house styles. Not surprisingly, these independent efforts to standardize Bengali orthography have helped to create a degree of confusion.

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Why humans can recognise faces and read

A team led by Kolkata-born scientists has discovered a special sweet spot in the eye plays a crucial role in humans being able to to focus on computer screens and also read, an ability which is unique to Homo sapiens.
Pallava Bagla reports.
Illustration: Uttam Ghosh

A team led by Kolkata-born scientists has found that a special sweet spot in the eye called 'fovea' plays a crucial role in humans being able to to focus on computer screens and also read, an ability which is unique to Homo sapiens.

The findings decipher the mechanism that lets humans reading this text, recognising faces, enjoying colours, say the scientists.

Raunak Sinha and Mrinalini Hoon describe themselves as a 'scientist couple' who push the frontiers of neuroscience to better understand vision.

Ready for dinner 16 feet underwater?

If you're bored of your regular dining options and are looking for something new and exciting, consider trying out a new restaurant called 'The Pearl' in Brussels.

However, to eat here, you have to put on scuba gear and flippers.

Why? Because, this place is located underwater at the bottom of a swimming pool, five metres (16 feet) below the surface.

Once you make it to the restaurant, you and your dinner companion will remove your equipment and climb inside a two-metre wide pod.

The underwater capsule has a little table inside where you'll sit and enjoy your food. Just like at regular restaurants, the food is brought to you by waiters who are expert scuba divers.

The waiters deliver foie gras, lobster salad and champagne in waterproof cases before leaving the diners peering out of the portholes, enjoying the strange tranquility of eating in an air pocket, completely submerged.

It’s also fairly exclusive, with room for just four people.

The Pearl is described as looking like a golf ball with windows. It is also supplied with oxygen by NEMO33, which is important for breathing.

After reading all this you may tempted to experience this unusual restaurant. Right?

So pack your bags and travel to Brussels, Belgium where ‘The Pearl’ is located. Also pay around $106 per person to get a reservation and enjoy the food underwater.

Friday, February 17, 2017

Gurugram Traffic Is So Bad That Kidnappers Let Go Of An Abducted Man

You may never have thought that the killer traffic jam at Gurugram may turn out to be a blessing in disguise for someone. In a fortunate (and amusing) turn of events, miscreants who tried to abduct the toll plaza official at Kherki Daula, Gurugram, let go of him after getting stuck in a traffic jam.

The incident took place at around 10:15 am, when a man driving a Mercedes car refused to pay the toll tax of Rs 60.

The accused also presented a fake driving licence, following which the accused and Manoj Kumar, the toll booth’s assistant manager ended up in a heated argument.

An hour later, the same Mercedes returned with three more men and another 15 men riding a Toyota Fortuner. They then abducted Manoj Kumar at gun point.

The gang, however, refrained from opening fire as they were inching closer to the toll booth. They chose to drive off some 150 metres away from the booth and thrash Kumar black and blue.

Here's the CCTV footage:

As the traffic at the toll plaza kept increasing, the abductors had no other choice but to let go off the manager. Speaking to HT, Manoj Kumar said, ‘They feared being seen or caught trying to take me away.’

The Kherki Daula police have registred a case for assault and abduction under IPC section.

Just a few days ago, a Congress leader refused to pay the toll fee and assaulted an operator at the same booth, however, no action has been taken so far.

Dear New York Times Do You Still Think ISRO Should Be Kept Outside The 'Elite Club'

For the past couple of years, every time the ISRO registers a success, The New York Times has been on the receiving end of being trolled by Indians.

This is because in October 2014 the NYT did an utterly tasteless job of mocking India's Mangalyaan success with a cartoon.

It depicted an Indian, with a cow knocking on the doors of the 'Elite Space Club'.

As expected, the cartoon which came at a time when ISRO's space mission was at its peak didn't go down well with Indians.

They trolled the NYT for days until they issued an apology.

But the cartoon has not gone away from the memory. And it has once again come back to haunt them.

So dear NYT, here is some reply!

TOI

Now, how does that feel?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VTkDurmh7Q