As the British government promises to drop the debt owed to it by the world’s poorest countries, I consider the carefully avoided, unasked question
Textbooks make up ninety percent of Africa’s total book production. Whilst the continent’s population makes up twelve percent of the global figure, it produces only one percent of the world’s books. As a result, the remaining ten percent of Africa’s book production, which includes liturgical materials, academic books and gray literature, makes up a tiny and almost insignificant proportion (Chakava, 1996, pp.79-81). The affect of this situation on African authors is put by the President of the Ghana Association of Writers:
ONE MAY wonder why I would choose to write reflections on The Letter from James.1 The answer primarily boils down to a personal reason. From the time I was about fifteen, I slipped almost continually between atheism, agnosticism, deism and doubt. During my second stay on the Isle of Iona2, overwhelmed by emotion and the beauty of the music in the abbey, I rejected God. I pretended to myself that God was not real and, from that point, I began questioning life, our existence, meaning, and myself. I hated attending church after that, for I felt like a hypocrite, uttering words I didn’t believe in and singing hymns I wished to avoid. But in my second year of university, I began to seek answers and I began to make an effort to discover what religious people call the truth. So, impressed by the preaching of John Stott at All Souls in central London, I began attending that church every Sunday just to listen to the sermons. Meanwhile, at the same time, I took to reading the Bible.
It’s strange. To the other tenents in my flat I was ‘nice’. I was a bit quiet, quite polite, considerate and gentle. I was just, to them, ‘nice’. But suddenly, one day, I was a manifestation of evil. Someone to be ignored and hated. No more patronising “Oh, you’re so good”s when they found me hoovering the stairs; I was now to be frowned upon. To be whispered about and to be slandered. Because yesterday I was one imagined character, and today I am another. They had all heard that I had embraced Islam.
GOD SAYS in the Qur’an: ‘Surely does God hold the heavens and the earth, lest they cease. And if they should cease, none can hold them after Him.’ (Fatir, 35:41) And: ‘And if God were to impose blame upon the people for what they have earned, He would not leave upon it any creature. But He defers them until an appointed term.’ (Fatir, 35:45)
Water being the physical source of life, (more…)
In 1990, Middle Eastern Oil reserves were believed to account for 65.5 percent of the world total. This region is of, if now declining, importance to the global economy, and within the region, Iran has played an important part. In this article, I look at the development of the oil industry in Iran from 1900 until its attempt at nationalisation in 1951. Here I present an examination of the infrastructure of the region and how this has affected the industry’s development.
You said we could speak about it if I ever needed to, but I knew we never could and never would.
I know your hate for Islam; I have seen it in your face when watching television or when it comes up in a conversation. In the summer, X was trying to think of the intellectual force at the time of the last millenium. There, there was utter silence, and I kept silent too, through fear, though I could have spoken for hours.
When you read my Tanzanian report, where I said I didn’t have the faith of my family, and then you gave me advice by speaking to mum so that I would overhear.
I find myself in the worst position I could imagine. I am scared.
Every night praying that I’ll wake up in the morning.
I believe in a despised religion
Is it that you try to steal my identity? You take my name, and thinking yourself Italian, you mould it and morph it, and make it your own. But, oh, my dear friend, I am the original egotist. The Neurocentric, centred on himself; on his own wants and desires, and on his complaints about the life that never went to plan. For a closet exhibitionist am I, and on fame and fortune, I have my eye. My thoughts appear in words in print, yet of my intentions I give no hint. In silent thought, alone I sit. Would you ever know I’m a hypocrite?
The starting point of any dialogue must be that the parties involved are committed to honesty. This may seem like a statement of the obvious, but it is a point which seems to have escaped many. To illustrate, we may refer to an article which appeared in the Church Times during the Lambeth Conference in 1998, entitled, ‘When the chips are down’ (Margaret Duggan, 31 July 1998, p.4). In this article, the author summarises a speach given at the conference by Bishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon of Kaduna diocese in northern Nigeria, on dialogue between Muslims and Christians. Duggan makes no attempt in her article to verify the Bishops’s statements; it is a report of his speech, but it is clearly also more than that. Although statements about Muslims, the Qur’an or Islam are all attributed only to the Bishop, the causal reader will finish the article with an idea that he or she has an accurate representation of these matters. This is especially true since the source is said to have degrees in Islamic Studies.
His Afrocentric lifestyle was all very nice. His collections of pottery was extraordinary. But from his lips, words of ignorance slipped. “Nike-ear, nice-eya,” he struggled to pronounce, “Nice-what? I’ve never heard of it.”
Paul, in his letter to the Romans (Revised English Bible, Romans 3:7), wrote, “…if the truth of God is displayed to his greater glory through my falsehood, why should I any longer be condemned as a sinner?” And therefore, on these grounds that saint Paul says lying is alright, I will announce to you all a new religion and you will all follow me because I say it is true and you will not question me. Actually, I won’t announce anything of the sort; that was a wee lie; but there is a point to my incoherent meanderings.
According to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the meaning of life is 42. By some people’s definition, I could take that as my faith and I wouldn’t be any worse for ware. Choose another stance, and nothing will ever seem quite right again: “God? Why bring ‘that’ up?” I suppose if you want people to respect you, you don’t. “It’s something private” at the very least. But mid-term I did what nobody expected; it shocked some, offended a few and upset one or two. “I’ve got something to tell you,” I said to my partner in crime of the first year, as I stood on the steps outside, warm in the summer heat. “I became a Muslim.”
They say, “Travel broadens your mind.” My question is, “What do you do with that mind once it’s broadened?” An open mind, at least, will bring you nothing but problems. My problem is, I’m told, that I question everything. But when it comes to faith, I won’t follow blindly; I have to know, understand and believe.
Born of a rather religious family, there came a time when I stopped and thought. The music was beautiful, it made me emotional, then I stepped back and rejected the idea of God. I was an immature fifteen year old, selfishly denying a world that cared, searching for pity while claiming victimisation. Since then, I grew up, rekindled a belief in God, though it falters now and then, but I never really managed the same with my religion. At fifteen I was writing letters to a Christian friend, asking question after question, choosing to reject a faith more than retrieve it; but, after the fourth letter, it must have got too much, for he politely asked me to stop: I was a “threat” to his faith. I don’t remember my questions too well, but I imagine they weren’t that harsh. I was fifteen, he was thirty something, and, if I recall my intelligence, my enquiries could hardly have been advanced.
