Is Modi's Honeymoon Over?

Things are not looking so rosy at home for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he continues his world tour with the latest stop in Beijing, China.

Is Modi government's honeymoon already over on its first anniversary at the helm? Has the Indian economy really turned around? Is it really growing faster than China? Are Indian businesses doing better under the new government? Are investors more excited about India's prospects? Has Indian currency recovered to levels before its collapse in 2013? Is India any cleaner than it was last year? To answer these questions, let's look at some data:

1. Revision of GDP methodology by India's Central Statistical Office (CSO) to show it is growing faster than China has drawn serious skepticism, even derision by serious economists around the world. While India's boosters in the West are not only buying but applauding the new figures, Indian policy professionals at the nation's Central Bank and the Finance ministry are having a very hard time believing the new and improved GDP brought to the world by Indian government. Dissenters include Morgan Stanley's Ruchir Sharma, an Indian-American, who has called the new numbers a "bad joke" aimed at a "wholesale rewriting of history".

2. India's exports are continuing to drop. The trade data shows a sharper slowdown (21%) in exports than in imports (13%,  due to lower oil prices) for March, 2015.  Exports are down another 13.96% in April 2015. There is an overall decline in both for the year too, according to Seeking Alpha.

3. Large scale manufacturing in India continues to disappoint. Growth slowed in April 2015, according to HSBC India Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) data. At 51.3 in April, down from 52.1 in March, the headline PMI points to slowing demand.

4. Mumbai stocks are among the worst performing in emerging markets. FII (foreign institutional investments) net outflows gave been of the order of Indian Rs 125 billion (about US$ 2 billion) over the past month. The stock market index has seen the biggest correction of 10 per cent in a short time, according to India's First Post.

5. In spite of Prime Minister Modi's high-profile campaign to improve hygiene,  India has been ranked near the bottom on access to clean water and sanitation. India has ranked 92 on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene  (WASH) Index developed by The Water Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Gillings School of Global Public Health in the US, far below Pakistan which ranked near the top in 5th position.

India's Economic Times has recently reported results of a survey of top CEOs.  Majority of them say that demand is depressed. "The bonhomie and cheer that greeted the arrival of the Modi government is replaced by a sombre mood and a grim acknowledgement of the realities of doing business in India," reports ET, as it captures the sentiment of the CEOs. The largest engineering conglomerate L and T has said some of its plants are idle as demand for capital goods is very weak. The Aditya Birla Group had deferred its revenue target of $65 billion by 3 years, to 2018.

A recent piece titled "Why India is Not A Buy in Current Environment" published by Seeking Alpha summarizes the current Indian situation as follows:

"While there are some who consider India to be the best emerging market and recommend it as such, my own assessment is different. Whether it's relatively high valuations, weak fundamentals with persistent deficits, government bonds under pressure, weakening currency, rebounding oil prices, declining confidence in the government and so on, India is facing a ton of headwinds going forward. Far too many to be a number one pick among emerging markets."

Modi government has to turn some of its election promises into action. Mr. Modi cannot rely on the benefit of the doubt because his honeymoon period is now over. He will be judged on what he is able to accomplish.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Can India Survive Without Western Money Inflows?

Modi's Pakistan Policy

India's Soaring Twin Deficits

Xi Jinping's Pakistan Visit

How Strategic Are China-Pakistan Ties?

India Pakistan Economic Comparison in 2014

Pakistan's KSE-100 Outperforms India's Sensex

India's IT Exports Highly Exaggerated

Is India Fudging GDP to Show Faster Growth Than China?

Malaysia's Ex-PM Mahathir Stirs Up Hadith Controversy

Dr. Mahathir Mohammad, the ex-prime minister of Malaysia who is credited with transforming his country into an Asian Tiger economy,  recently made a controversial speech about the Hadith, the sayings of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).

Here are a few excerpts of what Dr. Mahathir is reported by Malaysia's FMT news to have said last week at a conference in Putrajaya:

1. “We seem to have rejected the Quran in favor of the Hadith"

2. “The teachings, or the performance, or the traditions of the Prophet come after he had been given the message of Allah, which is recorded in the Quran.”

3. “Between the two (Quran and Hadith),  it is obviously the Quran that is superior.”

4. “Allah is merciful and compassionate. One who is merciful and compassionate would not enjoy stoning people to death.”

To put the above quotes in perspective, let's consider the following:

1.  The words of the Holy Quran were meticulously recorded and preserved in writing by the companions of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) during his lifetime in the 7th century AD. However, the Hadith collections were compiled two centuries later by Persian scholars who lived and died in Khorasan (now Uzbekistan) and Persian (now Iran).

2. Many scientific studies have shown that honest people routinely make mistakes in recalling what they have directly seen and heard in person. Sahih Muslim and Sahih Bukhari were compiled in 9th century by people who were distant from the source in both time and space. They relied entirely on long and complex chains of narrations for their work.

3. There's an old communications game, telegraph, that's played in a circle as a communication class exercise. A message is whispered around from person to person. What the exercise usually proves is how profoundly the message changes as it passes through the distortion of each person's inner "filter."

As we ponder over the above, let's deal with the suggestion to leave such matters to the "religious scholars". Should we really? Haven't we been doing it for centuries?

Leaving it to the "religious experts" has clearly not helped the Muslim ummah. It is widely believed among watchers of Islam and Muslims that taqlid is responsible for the end of the Golden Age of the Islamic Civilization (800-1100AD) and continuing decline since then, particularly in terms of the sciences and the arts.

The Holy Quran tells its readers repeatedly to seek knowledge, think, reason and reflect on our own. Afala Ta'qilun, Afala Yatadabbarun, Afala Tatafakkarun, Afala Tubsirun and similar verses appear over 700 times in the Holy Book of Muslims, far more often than exhortation to salat (prayer), zakat (charity) and saum (fasting).

To rise again, let us Muslims do what Allah commands us to do in The Holy Quran: Learn, think, reason and reflect on our own to draw our own conclusions.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Rise and Fall of Islamic Civilization

The Prophet I Know

Muslims Have Few Nobel Prizes

Riaz Haq's Ramadan Sermon

Ibn Khaldun: The Father of Modern Social Sciences

Quaid-e-Azam Vision of Pakistan Inspired by Misaq-e-Madina

Obama Speaks to the Muslim World

Lost Discoveries by Dick Teresi

Physics of Christianity by Frank Tipler

What is Not Taught in School

How Islamic Inventors Changed the World

Jinnah's Pakistan Booms Amidst Doom and Gloom

Pakistan 2.0: Technology Driving Productivity

Introduction of green revolution technologies drove Pakistan's rapid GDP growth in 1960s and 1970s when it was essentially an agricultural economy. The decade of 1980s saw livestock revolution that helped increase farm productivity. Will rapid absorption of information and communication technology (ICT) do the same in coming decades?

Abundance of historical data on educational attainment shows that young Pakistanis are more literate and better educated than their parents and grandparents. And recent data confirms that they are rapidly embracing new technologies. Technology, particularly ICT, is increasingly visible among consumers, industries and public sector.  As a result, Pakistan today stands at the threshold of soaring productivity and rising standards of living over the next several decades. The basic requirements for it to materialize are maintenance of peace and security and  increasing investments in education, health care, energy and infrastructure.

3G, 4G Mobile Broadband Rollout:

The launch of 3G and 4G networks has accelerated the growth of Internet users in Pakistan. More than a million subscribers are signing up every month since the 3G and 4G rollout in the country last year. These new users are generating more and more data traffic requiring rapid increases in available bandwidth.

Pakistan ended March 2015 with over 12.07 million 3G/4G subscribers, up from 10.34 million in February, according to data from Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA). Telenor led the 3G/4G market with over 3.53 million subscribers, followed by CMPak (2.95 million 3G/4G subscribers), Mobilink (2.86 million 3G subscribers), and Ufone (2.66 million 3G subscribers). Warid had 66,140 LTE network subscribers at 31 March.

Thousands of kilometers long fiber network is currently in place to deal with the growing domestic bandwidth demand. Several projects are underway to grow this network further.

Consumer Applications:

Young entrepreneurs are developing and launching mobile apps for everything from sports and entertainment to education, ride-sharing and e-commerce.

Pepper.pk has topped BlackBerry’s Appworld with their game Ninja Fruit Bash, TenPearls won Nokia and ATT Innovators 2011 contest through their game Animal 101, start-ups such as PiLabs also made their mark with mobile games such as ‘Field Garfield’ which is an official Garfield game.

A ride-sharing app called savaree, photo-sharing app Groopic and custom shoes app Markhor have been making news lately in Pakistan and overseas.

E-commerce is taking off in Pakistan with companies such as Home shopping, Shophive, daraz.pk and Symbios are becoming popular for online shopping.

Spurred by a favorable regulatory and technology environment, Pakistan is witnessing dramatic growth in mobile banking.  Four out of five cellular mobile companies currently operating in Pakistan have launched m-money systems in partnership with financial institutions. The m-money market volume reached 153 million annual transactions worth US$ 6.2 billion as of 2013.

Industrial Applications:

Information and communications technology is being deployed in Pakistan's energy sector.

In addition to automatic reading of smart meters at the customer premises, smart meters have been installed with the support of USAID on incoming and outgoing feeders at all nine government-owned electric utilities. These will help move the system toward building of a smart national grid to better manage power generation, transmission and distribution in the country.

A captive power plant owned by Sapphire Group textile mill in Muridke Lahore is using hundreds of embedded sensors and other digital instruments in power turbines, analyzing the data they collect, and using the information to improve the plant’s performance, optimize production and reduce unplanned downtime. US-based General Electric is paying for the sensors and the software. The company will be paid by splitting all benefits with Sapphire under a win-win scenario, according to GE Reports website.

Public Sector Applications:

IT projects ranging from automated meter reading and computerized land records management to online education and mobile banking are now at various stages of implementation across Pakistan.  In a report released last year, the World Bank called these projects "unprecedented in the public sector in developing countries". The objective of these efforts is to reduce corruption, increase productivity and improve service delivery in both private and public sectors.

The Punjab government is deploying smartphone applications to crack down on absentee mobile government workers and their corrupt practices. As part of this project, the government employee must send his or her picture and a report of interaction with citizens along with GPS coordinates. For example, a agricultural pest control official required to visit farmers must file reports of his findings and actions in real time via a smartphone app.

An SMS soliciting feedback from citizens is sent out after each such visit or interaction. Responses from users are logged into a central database, and the data then analyzed and mapped. Call centers have also been trained to contact those who do not respond or are unable to read the text due to illiteracy. More than three million users of public services have so far been contacted since the summer of 2012, with both positive and negative feedback, according to the World Bank report. “Sir, we went to the hospital yesterday. They asked for 1500 rupees [in bribes]. We didn’t have the money so we left,” reads one of the reports about a hospital in Lahore, the provincial capital. The feedback is actively monitored by the office the Chief Secretary – the top civil servant in the province – to manage the performance of officials.

Summary:

Pakistan today stands at the threshold of soaring productivity and rising standards of living over the next several decades. The basic requirements for it to materialize are maintenance of peace and security and  increasing investments in education, health care, energy and infrastructure.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

High-Speed Fiber Optic Connectivity in Pakistan

E-Commerce in Pakistan

Public Sector Apps in Pakistan

History of Educational Attainment in Pakistan

Online Education in Pakistan

Value Added Agriculture in Pakistan

Upwardly Mobile Pakistan

NADRA NA-122 Report; RAW in Pakistan; Future of PPP; Indian Media in Nepal

Were NA-122 and NA-125 elections rigged? Does NADRA report raise serious doubts about the credibility of PML's win in Pakistan's 2013 general elections? Is it PTI’s victory? Should the Nawaz Sharif government be worried?

What proof does the Pakistan Army have on RAW’s involvement in terrorist activities taking place in Pakistan? 

What has turned Zulfiqar Mirza against Asif Ali Zaradari? Is Pakistan People's Party going to split? 

What are the GCC countries doing at Camp David? Has the Saudi Arabia led coalition failed to get desired results in Yemen? 

Alif Ailaan report on education in Pakistan, and what does the report tell us? 

After the recent earthquake, is the Indian media truly despised in Nepal?

ViewPoint from Overseas host Faraz Darvesh discusses these and other questions with panelists Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com), Misbah Azam(www.politicsinpakistan.com), and Ali H Cemendtaur (www.Cemendtaur.net) in Silicon Valley, California, USA. 

https://vimeo.com/127407131

VPOS 050915-ipad from WBT TV on Vimeo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NYVa8Tx-m4

 Related Links:

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Has Modi Stepped Up India's Covert War in Pakistan?

Pakistan's 2013 General Elections

Pakistan's People's Party's Feudal Leadership

Indian Media's Nepal Coverage

Saudi Arabia's Yemen Campaign

Viewpoint From Overseas Youtube Channel

Viewpoint From Overseas Vimeo Channel

India and China Top Mexico as Sources of Illegal Immigration to USA

India left Mexico behind as the top country sending illegal immigrants into the United States as of 2012, according to several media reports.

A more recent review of 2013 immigration data shows that China replaced India and Mexico as the top country of origin for immigrants to the United States. The 2013 American Community Survey, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, recorded 1,201,000 immigrants. Of those, 125,000 came from Mexico, 129,000 came from India, and 147,000 came from China. The previous year, Mexican immigration (125,000) just topped Chinese immigration (124,000).

Pew Research has found that Indians constitute four per cent of the total illegal immigrants living in the US, a country where the overall unauthorized immigrant population has remained unchanged since 2009.

Mexicans still make up about half of all unauthorized immigrants (52%), though their numbers have been declining in recent years. There were 5.9 million Mexican unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. in 2012, down from 6.4 million in 2009, according to Pew Research Center estimates.

Ranking second to Mexico is El Salvador (675,000 in 2012), followed by Guatemala (525,000), India (450,000), Honduras (350,000), China (300,000) and the Philippines (200,000). But largely because of a marked decline in Mexican unauthorized immigrants since 2009, the shares of unauthorized immigrants from other nations and regions have grown. The sudden reversal of a long trend of growth in the number of Mexican unauthorized immigrants probably results from both a marked decline in new arrivals and an increase in departures to Mexico.

Among the states in America, Indians make up the largest undocumented immigrant group in New Hampshire. While the Indian illegal immigrants comprise second largest population in Indiana with four per cent, the percentages in other states were Michigan (4%), Minnesota (9%), New Jersey (11%), Ohio (11%), Pennsylvania (11%) and Washington (5%), the report said. Indians are the third largest unauthorized immigrants in Alaska (4%), Arizona (2%), Delaware (7%), Illinois (5%), Kansas (5%), Massachusetts (10%), Missouri (9%)and Oregon (2%).

Since the US-Mexico border crackdown on illegal immigration via Arizona and Texas, the Indian human smugglers have changed their trafficking pattern from Guatemala and Mexico land route to Haiti sea route, says a US government report.

Many surveys conducted in India over the years indicate that millions of Indians want to leave India to settle abroad. A quick Google search for "Escape from India" produces nearly 100 million results.  Many Indians cite lack of opportunity, poverty and various forms of discrimination as the reasons for wanting to leave India.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Illegal Immigration From India to US

How to Escape From India?

India: Home to World's Largest Population of Poor, Hungry and Illiterates

India's Share of World's Poor Jumps to 33%

Caste Apartheid in India

Untouchables: My Family's Triumphant Escape from India's Caste System

Female Genocide Unfolding in India

Pakistani Textbooks Acknowledge National Contribution of Minorities

Pakistani history books for middle and high school students now describe the role played by Christians, Hindus and Sikhs in building the country after independence, according to Pakistan Christian Post.

Professor Anjum James Paul, Chairman  of Pakistan Minorities Teachers’ Association (PMTA) and member of the Textbook Review Committee, says that “Role of minorities in the creation of Pakistan” for History 8 and “ Role of minorities in Pakistan” for Pakistan Studies 10 are now part of the National Curriculum.

The new textbooks acknowledge that minority leaders attended the Annual meeting of the All India Muslim League on 23rd March 1940 when the Pakistan Resolution was passed. Among the attendees were Diwan Bahadar Sittia Parkash Singha, a renowned lawyer Chaudhry Chandu Lal, CE Gibbon, F.E. Chaudary, Raj Kumari Amrit, Fazal Ilahi, Alfried Purshad and S.S. Albert.

As the Pakistan Movement neared its goal of partition,  Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah sought and received the support of the Christian leader Ch. Chandu Lal and the Sikh leader Giani Kartar Singh in Lahore.

The Punjab Boundary Commission representing Pakistan's interests at the time of partition included Justice Din Muhammad, Sir Zafarullah Khan and Sardar Baddar Singh. Several Christian leaders appearing before it asked that the Christian population of Punjab be counted as a part of Pakistan.

In Sindh, the Parsi community played an important role. A Parsee leader named Jamshed Nusser Wangee Mehta became the first mayor of Karachi after the creation of Pakistan. He was instrumental in welcoming the Muhajirs from India and helped them settle in Karachi.

Pakistan has had several top judges, bureaucrats and military officers who have served the nation with distinction. Among the most prominent of them were Supreme Court Chief Justice A.R. Cornelius, Justice Bhawan Das, Justice Dorab Patel, Major General Julian Peter, Maj Gen Israel Khokhar, Group Captain Cecil Chaudhry and Air Commodore Władysław Turowicz.

Better late than never. It's good to see Pakistan finally acknowledge the role of minorities in its creation and development. I hope it's just the beginning of the march toward Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah's vision of a more inclusive Pakistan.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Rising Tide of Intolerance Threatens Pakistan

Akhand Bharat Part of Indian Textbooks

Hindutva Distortions in Indian Textbooks

Fighting Agents of Intolerance in Pakistan

Muslim Scholars Must Fight Hate in Pakistan

South Asian Christians Celebrate Christmas in Fear

Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah's Vision

Pakistan Must Defeat Agents of Intolerance 

Celebrating Quaid-e-Azam M.A. Jinnah's Birthday

Funding of Hate Groups, NGOs, Think Tanks: Is Money Free Speech?

Are corporations people?  Do constitutional guarantees of free speech apply to corporations spending money to shape public policy? The United States Supreme Court has answered both of these questions in the affirmative in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission case.

Even before the  US Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case, the United States government and various interest groups have been spending vast sums of money to promote "free speech" and buy influence around the world for a long time. This money is given to non-government organizations (NGOs) and various think tanks, either directly by the USAID or through various private American foundations with the blessings of Uncle Sam.

Funding of Hate Groups' "Free Speech": 

Free Speech is a useful cover for many hate groups that are spewing venom against minorities. Such groups, particularly anti-Muslim groups in the United States, are very well funded. Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights group, estimates that these groups have raised and spent over $100 million in recent years.

Spending on Islamophobia is having a significant effect on Americans perception of Muslim Americans. Results differ by political party, with the majority of Republicans holding negative views of both Arab-Americans and Muslims. Democrats gave Arab-Americans a 30 percent unfavorable rating and Muslim-Americans a 33 percent unfavorable rating, while Republicans gave Arab-Americans a 54 percent unfavorable rating and Muslim-Americans a 63 percent unfavorable rating, according to public opinion survey conducted by Zogby Analytics.


US Support of NGOs, Think Tanks:

There has been extensive documentation of US government funding of NGOs for the purpose of pushing US agenda around the world. The most detailed description of it became public with revelations contained in "Who Paid the Piper" by Frances Stonor Saunders. More recently, an investigative reporter Robert Parry has documented the role played by US-funded National Endowment for Democracy in destabilizing Ukraine in a piece titled "A Shadow of US Foreign Policy".

In "The Mask of Pluralism", author Joan Roelofs describes certain CIA-designated organizations, using the funds from the “dummy” foundations, funding pro-American NGOs to advance US policies.

Many countries, including India, have made several attempts to regulate foreign funding of NGOs. Just recently, Modi government has frozen the accounts of Green Peace India and put Ford Foundation on its watch list.

There are hundreds of foreign-funded NGOs operating in Pakistan. Many of them provide much needed service but some are likely being used as cover to push foreign agendas. It has been established that the CIA used one such organization to fund a fake polio vaccination campaign in Abbotabad as part of its hunt for Usama Bin Laden.

Role Reversal:

In a strange twist, Americans are now complaining about foreign funding of Washington NGOs and Think Tanks. New York Times has named several foreign governments from Asia, Europe and the Middle East providing tens of millions of dollars to American think tanks to push "United States government officials to adopt policies that often reflect the donors’ priorities".

Since 2011, at least 64 foreign governments have contributed to a group of 28 major US-based think tanks and NGOs, according to disclosures by the institutions and government documents.

As the New York Times puts it: "The money is increasingly transforming the once-staid think-tank world into a muscular arm of foreign governments’ lobbying in Washington. And it has set off troubling questions about intellectual freedom: Some scholars say they have been pressured to reach conclusions friendly to the government financing the research."

Foreign-Funded US Think Tanks:

Here are three of many examples of foreign government funding of think tanks cited by New York Times:

1. Japanese government is a major donor to Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) for the purpose of promoting free trade treaties, particularly the Trans Pacific Partnership, in recent years.

2. United Arab Emirates is a major donor to the Atlantic Council. Michele Dunne was forced to resign the head of its center for the Middle East after calling for the suspension of military aid to Egypt in 2013 after the military coup that overthrew the democratically government of President Mohammad Mursi.

3. Norway has given at least $24 million to several Washington think tanks over the past four years, according to a tally by The New York Times, transforming these nonprofits into a powerful but largely hidden arm of the Norway Foreign Affairs Ministry. Documents obtained under that country’s unusually broad open records laws reveal that American research groups, after receiving money from Norway, have advocated in Washington for enhancing Norway’s role in NATO, promoted its plans to expand oil drilling in the Arctic and pushed its climate change agenda.

Summary:

"Free Speech"is extensively being used as a cover to promote special interests and spew hate speech in the United States and elsewhere in the world.

Foreign funding of NGOs and Think Tanks is a reality.  This fact must be acknowledged.  As Saleem Ali, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar, put it to New York Times: “If a member of Congress is using the Brookings reports, they should be aware — they are not getting the full story.”  Ali said he had been told during his job interview that he could not take positions critical of the Qatari government in papers. “They may not be getting a false story, but they are not getting the full story.”

The Clinton Foundation, headed by former US President Bill Clinton and his wife Hilary, the former secretary of state, has come under severe criticism for accepting millions of dollars from foreign contributors. American media are demanding full disclosure and transparency from the couple. Shouldn't it also apply to foreign donations flowing into NGOs in Pakistan?

With growing Pakistan-China cooperation, trade and investment, Indian and western governments and spy agencies will try and ratchet up the pressure on the two countries by further fueling the insurgency in Pakistan. The issue will be played up by western and Indian media and some foreign funded NGOs in Pakistan as the work on China-Pakistan corridor proceeds and Chinese investment in Pakistan materializes.  This cynical effort could claim more innocent and well-meaning victims like Sabeen Mahmud who get caught up as pawns in the cross-fire of  international geopolitics. Pakistani leaders and people need to be aware of it and be prepared to deal with it intelligently.

Here's a video discussion on this subject:




https://vimeo.com/126093896



Who killed Sabeen Mahmud? NA-246 Results prove what. Yemen from WBT TV on Vimeo.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2o3uj0_who-killed-sabeen-mahmud-what-do-na-246-results-prove-yemen_news


Who killed Sabeen Mahmud- What do NA-246... by faizan-maqsood

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Who Killed Sabeen Mahmud? Why? 

Pak-China Industrial Corridor

American Hypocrisy on Dr. Afridi's Sentence

Post Cold War World: Pakistan-China-Russia Vs India-US-Japan

How Strategic Are China-Pakistan Ties?

Alaska Permanent Fund: A Model For Balochistan?

Has Modi Stepped Up India's Covert War in Pakistan?

Serious Issues Undermining Baloch Insurgency

Rise and Fall of Islamic Civilization: Why Do Stars Have Arabic Names?

Where did star names like Ain ( عين),  Betelgeuse (إبط الجوزاء ) and Cursa ( الكرسي) come from? Who named Californium and Berkelium elements of the periodic table?  Famous American scientist Dr.Neil deGrasse Tyson answered these and other questions in some recent video presentations.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, and science communicator, according to Wikipedia. Since 1996, he has been the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City.

What Dr. Tyson describes as "naming rights" simply means that those who discover new things get to name them. Californians got the naming rights to some of the elements of the periodic table  while the Arabs got to name vast majority of the stars in the Cosmos. In modern western astronomy, most of the accepted star names are Arabic, a few are Greek and some are of unknown origin.

Alhazen 965-1040 AD

Continuing on the naming rights theme, Dr. Tyson also describes the Islamic origins of Arabic numerals, Algebra, Algorithm, Alchemy and Alcohol as products of the Islamic Golden Age of Science in 800 to 1100 AD.


The lesson Dr. Tyson draws from the rise and fall of of Muslims is as follows: Islamic civilization remained dominant in sciences and mathematics as long as Muslims practiced Ijtihad to ask questions and find answers to questions. What led to their decline was Taqlid, the unquestioning faith in Revelation.

Dr. Tyson credits the great Muslim philosopher Alhazen (Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham 965-1040 AD) with inventing the modern scientific method. Alhazen questioned everything, especially the things everyone took for granted, says Dr. Tyson. Alhazen's work was lavishly funded by the Muslim Caliphs. All of it changed when Imam Al Ghazali, or Algazel, a highly influential Islamic scholar of his time, succeeded in persuading Muslims to accept Taqlid that triggered rapid decline of the Islamic world.

Dr. Tyson has used the example of the great Islamic Civilization's decline to warn Americans against repeating it. He has particularly targeted those in America who denounce Darwin's theory of evolution or reject the validity of climate science.

Here are three important video presentations made by Dr. Tyson on the subject:

https://vimeo.com/102210952



Islamic Golden Age of science يوم كانت العربية لغة العلم from Mahmoud Ibrahim on Vimeo.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2f9uj3_how-imam-ghazali-s-teachings-ended-the-islamic-golden-age-neil-degrasse-tyson-explains-what-went-wro_news



How Imam Ghazali's teachings ended the Islamic... by zemtv

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDAT98eEN5Q

Here's Pakistani Nobel Laureate Dr. Abdus Salam on  the reasons for the decline of science in the Muslim world: 

"Islam was very strongly research-minded until about Year 1000 AD. Then there was a big battle between the Sufis and the theologians (established religious leaders). Theologians won that battle. They (theologians) put an embargo on independent thinking in the Islamic world. That started the decline of science in Islamic world. They killed off (Mansur) Al-Hallaj and many others. Islam has no theologians (established priesthood) but you still need a stamp of approval from the religious establishment. They control the population (people) by declaring all dissenters non-Muslim (excommunicate them). This is still going on".

https://youtu.be/cXDehJzuXAg

   

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Muslims Have Few Nobel Prizes

Ibn Khaldun: The Father of Modern Social Sciences

Obama Speaks to the Muslim World

Lost Discoveries by Dick Teresi

Physics of Christianity by Frank Tipler

What is Not Taught in School

How Islamic Inventors Changed the World

Jinnah's Pakistan Booms Amidst Doom and Gloom

Altaf Hussain's Rants; Indian Media on Pak Beef in Nepal; Baltimore Protests

Is Altaf Hussain mentally stable? Why did he react as he did to Police Superintendent Anwar Rao's allegations of MQM-RAW connections? 

What caused Baltimore riots? What is the history of race relations in American cities?

Why was a beef product sent to the Nepal earthquake victims, by the Pakistanis?  Why is the Indian media making a big deal of it? 

Is the Baloch insurgency dying? Is the Pakistani media choosing self-censorship after Sabeen Mahmud’s murder? Are talks like "Un-Silencing" on Balochistan normally one-sided, against Pakistani state? 

ViewPoint from Overseas host Misbah Azam (www.politicsinpakistan.com) discusses these and other questions with panelists Riaz Haq(www.riazhaq.com), and Ali H Cemendtaur (www.Cemendtaur.net) in Silicon Valley, California, USA. 

کیا ایم کیو ایم کے الطاف حسین کا دماغی توازن درست نہیں ہے یا وہ نشے میں تقریر کرتے ہیں؟ ایس پی رائو انور کی پریس کانفرینس کے بعد الطاف حسین کی بے ہنگم تقریر اور اس پہ اٹھنے والا طوفان، اور پھر الطاف حسین کی معافی کیا معنی رکھتی ہے؟ نیپال میں زلزلے سے متاثرین کی مدد کے لیے پاکستان سے گائے کا گوشت کیوں گیا؟ اگر یہ غلطی تھی تو بھارتی میڈیا اس غلطی پہ اس قدر شور کیوں مچا رہا ہے؟ امریکہ میں سیاہ فام اور سفید فام لوگوں کے درمیان تنائو اور پے درپے سیاہ فام نوجوانوں کا سفید فام پولیس افسران کے ہاتھوں مارے جانے کے واقعات کیوں ہورہے ہیں؟ کیا سبین محمود کے قتل کے بعد بلوچستان کے موضوع پہ پاکستانی میڈیا نے سینسرشپ اختیار کرلی ہے؟ بلوچستان پہ ہونے والے سیمینار میں ان لوگوں کی آواز کیوں نہیں سنی جاتی جن کے رشتہ داروں کو بلوچ دہشت گردوں نے بے دردی سے قتل کیا ہے؟
ویو پواءنٹ فرام اوورسیز کے میزبان مصباح اعظم کی ریاض حق، اور علی حسن سمندطور سے گفتگو۔

https://vimeo.com/126692020



VPOS 050115-ipad from WBT TV on Vimeo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMyEAN1KcNs





Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Indian Media Propaganda Against Pakistan Relief Supplies in Nepal Quake

Who Killed Sabeen? Why?

Gwadar as Hong Kong West?

Pak-China Industrial Corridor

Gangs of Karachi

American Hypocrisy on Dr. Afridi's Sentence

Post Cold War World: Pakistan-China-Russia Vs India-US-Japan

How Strategic Are China-Pakistan Ties?

Alaska Permanent Fund: A Model For Balochistan?

Has Modi Stepped Up India's Covert War in Pakistan?

Serious Issues Undermining Baloch Insurgency

Will Pakistan's Gwadar Become "Hong Kong West"?

The port city of Hong Kong has played a pivotal role in China's economic and trade expansion on the Chinese East Coast in the Pacific region. Meanwhile, China's Western region has remained relatively underdeveloped.

China's West Coast:

Is China looking to build and use Gwadar in Pakistan as Hong Kong West to accelerate development in its West? Will Gwadar serve as a superhighway for China's trade expansion in Middle East, Africa and Europe? A point to project Chinese economic and military might westward?

Unlike the continental United States which has coasts on both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans allowing it easy access to Europe and Asia, China has only one coast, its East Coast along South China Sea.

As the Americans look to Asia with the US Pivot to Asia and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Chinese are looking to expand westward with Central Asia as well as Africa, Europe and the Middle East with "One Road One Belt" initiative funded by Silk Road Fund and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Pakistan is a crucial partner in this strategy, particularly the development of Pakistan-China Corridor linking China's western region with Gwadar port on the Arabia Sea.

Gwadar Deep Sea Port:

The Chinese see Gwadar deep sea port and the town of Jiwani as Hong Kong West, a gateway to Middle East, Africa and Europe. It will be the most important link in China's Maritime Silk Route (MSR), a sort of superhighway to the West for Chinese trade.

Professor Juan Cole of University of Michigan has aptly described the Chinese strategy as follows:

China’s enormous northwest is much closer to the Arabian Sea than to the port of Shanghai. It is about 2800 km. from Urumqi (pop. 4 million, the size of Los Angeles inside city limits) to Karachi, but twice as far to Shanghai. China has decided to develop its northwest by turning Pakistan into a sort of Hong Kong West. Hong Kong played, and perhaps still plays an important role as a gateway for certain kinds of foreign investment into China. In the same way, Pakistan can be a window on the world and a conduit for oil and trade into northwestern cities such as Urumqi and the smaller Kashgar (pop. 1 mn.)

In addition to a major expansion of the deep sea port,  there are plans in place for building a modern city with several skyscrapers, an international airport, highways and industrial parks in Gwadar, Balochistan. There will be air, road and rail links to move people and freight to and from around the world. Oil and gas pipelines are planned to transport energy as well. When completed, it will be comparable to major international port cities of Dubai, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Baloch Insurgency:

Baloch insuegency is cited as  a key threat to the implementation of the China-Pakistan Corridor in Pakistan. What is often not acknowledged by analysts is the fact that the Baloch insurgency is dying. It's a fact that has recently been described in some detail by Malik Siraj Akbar who is sympathetic to the Baloch separatist cause. Here's what Akbar wrote in December 2014 in a piece titled "The End of Pakistan's Baloch Insurgency?":

"Since its beginning in 2004, the Pakistan's Baloch insurgency is caught up in the worst infighting ever known to the general public. Different left-wing underground armed groups that had been fighting Islamabad for a free Baloch homeland have now started to attack each other's camps......Frustration, suspicion, infighting and division are the common features of the end of a guerrilla fight. Perhaps that time has come in Balochistan. "

Language Map of Balochistan

The announcement of the Pak-China deal seems to have re-energized those who seek to hurt Pakistan. They are now trying to resuscitate the dying Baloch insurgency. Western media has widely publicized an interview of Bramdagh Bugti who is running the insurgency from the comfort of a Swiss hotel room.  In addition, Pakistan's western-funded NGOs are being used to play up the Baloch insurgency in the media with events like "Un-Silencing Balochistan" event and by blaming the ISI for the murder of Karachi activist Sabeen Mahmud.

Summary:

The China-Pak Corridor deal could prove to be transformational for Pakistan's economy, prosperity and rising living standards of its nearly 200 million people. As development work moves forward for Gwadar and China-Pakistan Corridor, I fully expect several hostile nations, including neighboring India, to use their proxies on the ground in Balochistan and some members of the "civil society" made up of some foreign-funded NGOs in Pakistan to make progress as difficult as possible. There will be serious efforts by many to resuscitate the dying Baloch insurgency. Pakistani people and both civil and military leaders need to be prepared to deal with these hurdles.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Who Killed Sabeen Mahmud? Why?

Xi Jinping in Pakistan

Pak-China Industrial Corridor

American Hypocrisy on Dr. Afridi's Sentence

Post Cold War World: Pakistan-China-Russia Vs India-US-Japan

How Strategic Are China-Pakistan Ties?

Alaska Permanent Fund: A Model For Balochistan?

Has Modi Stepped Up India's Covert War in Pakistan?

Serious Issues Undermining Baloch Insurgency