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La Antena

Roderik — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 05:06:01 +0000

"Once upon a time there was a city without a voice. Somebody had taken away the voices of all its inhabitants. Many, many years went by and nobody seemed bothered by the silence."

The NPS couldn't have chosen a better moment to broadcast the Argentinian movie La Antena (the aerial) than after the news of Geert Wilders (Dutch' politician) brought to court for his criticism of the Islam. Where The Netherlands once was a country where freedom of speech was one of our highest values times seems to be changing. Especially his comparison of the Quran and the book Mein Kampf was taken as an offense for the muslim society in The Netherlands. The claim that Wilders spreads hate and is guilty of discrimination is far overrated though. Opinions should be spoken out even if they are not so sharming, they can become a ground for debate. I hate to see our once open society to become like this. Do people really think that limiting the freedom of expression will lead to a more harmonious society?
Luckily Denmark gave better response to the rumours concerning their cartoonist.

Reflexive, allegorical and poetic, La Antena is a dizzyingly dense piece of cinema, thriving on paradox, and always matching its medium to its message. Though I do not consider `La Antena' as a master piece, it is definitely worth watching (I rate it 6.6/10). And luckily it leaves us with some beautiful statements.

"They have taken our voices but we still have words"

review of the film

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Guantánamo Bay

Roderik — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:50:39 +0000

In The Guardian today:
The former head of interrogations at Guantánamo Bay found that records of an al-Qaida suspect tortured at the prison camp were mysteriously lost by the US military, according to a new book by one of Britain's top human rights lawyers.

Retired general Michael Dunlavey, who supervised Guantánamo for eight months in 2002, tried to locate records on Mohammed al-Qahtani, accused by the US of plotting the 9/11 attacks, but found they had disappeared.

The records on al-Qahtani, who was interrogated for 48 days - "were backed up ... after I left, there was a snafu and all was lost", Dunlavey told Philippe Sands QC, who reports the conversation in his book Torture Team, previewed last week by the Guardian. Snafu stands for Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.

Saudi-born al-Qahtani was sexually taunted, forced to perform dog tricks and given enemas at Guantánamo.

More about Guantánamo Bay on the Amnesty International web site [dutch]

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Birmingham Central Mosque

Roderik — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 00:38:26 +0000

Some months ago I went to the Mosque in Birmingham. The trip was organised by DSU and is part of the interfaith project. The mosque is one of the biggest in Europe. As a main place of worship I therefore expected it to be a wealthy place, however it turned out te be quite basic and different to the idea I had of mosque buildings, like the bowl formed ones. The mosque contains a large hall for prayer for the man and a smaller hall one floor above for woman. The hall is more or less empty except for the carpet and the large lamp, because they don't want to be distracted by anything during the prayers. All religious books are written in arabic and are not to be translated because the word was transmitted in arabic and has to be pure. Therefore everyone needs to have some understanding or arabic. However in my opinion this makes the religion less approachable in Europe because arabic is not so common here. Muslim pray 5 times a day at specific times, for today the first prayer was at 5:30 (yes AM). At least that would be one reason to me not to become a muslim. After someone showed us around we got a presentation about the faith and they were open for questions. In the presentation they said that Islam means "peace" and overall the religion was presented as a very peaceful one. Since public opinion, at least in Holland, seems to think differently about this I confronted them with this. However they did not agree on this. When I came to their views towards homosexual people they said that they needed to be dealt with respectfully. Although that was their view I think that the religion gives bases for multiple views on this and other issues. After looking up the meaning of Islam I found the translation of "submission" more often than "peace". Also I think there is a danger in characterising things as good or bad. In "Pauw & Witteman" there was a journalist in discussion with an islamic teacher. The teacher teaches that you need to hate bad things and therefore you need to hate people that don't follow Islam. Although the religious leaders usually say that hating and harming people are two totally different things there might be a danger in this religious justice. I don't think that muslims are more violent than non-muslims however, they seem to be considering their actions much more carefully than many other people. However religions have great authority and judging about other in terms of good and bad is dangerous in my opinion, I think this might lead to disrespect towards people that are considered to be bad according to religious views. Anyhow, everyone should be free to follow their own ideas as long as they do not limit others in doing the same.

And as a present we all got a calendar, so the ISKCON calendar in my room for last year has been replaced for a mosque of the month calendar this year. With this month the mosque from Casablanca.

The photos of the visit to the mosque are publicly available and can be found on facebook.

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