St Patrick’s Day Parade

London hosted the annual St Patrick’s Day parade today.

It will celebrate all that is great about Ireland, music, comedy, dancing, culture and Guinness!!!!

Why is it that London has many festivals and parties throughout its calendar for every nationality and culture but fails to recognise its own patron saints day?

This question has been raised many times before

Northern Ireland Troubles

The recent shootings in Northern Ireland have raised the questions.  Is it a return to the old days?  How much will the peace process be dictated to and how much will the peace process dictate the volume of attacks?

The Times published an article on 11^th March 2009 stating: MI5 is devoting more resources to Northern Ireland to try and identify and track down the new recruits to the Real IRA and Continuity IRA and to build up a better intelligence picture of the threat from the dissidents.

By identifying the murderers as members of these terrorist groups are we giving them more power and media attention, more than they deserve?  If they are branded killers and nothing else they are not receiving the recognition of belonging to terrorist groups.

But all the same they are acting on a small minority of people’s views and not the majority of views held across Ireland.

The Gaza Strip Debate. Can we move forward?

On Thursday 29th January 2009 the Queen Mary debate society held a very emotive discussion on possible solutions to the Gaza Strip situation.

In attendance were guest speakers, Brendan O’Neil, journalist and editor of spiked online. Saf Choudhury, SOAS University lecturer, Uthman Lateef, PHD researcher and chairing the debate was Hassan Choudhury, presenter on the Islam Channel.

Saf Choudhury
Observations he has made, humanitarian situation 2 billion dollars spent for a month’s work done, 1,400 people killed 5000 seriously injured, hospitals schools homes and sewage infrastructure and contaminated water have all been affected and destroyed in the attacks.

Current attacks by Israel on Gaza in the region has to be framed in theological terms from the standpoint of a Muslim. You cant sanitise the religious aspect of what is going on, when Muslims look at this conflict they are going to cast it in terms of how their faith arranges them to see it. There is no separation from what is theological, religious and what is political they don’t divorce it.

Saf Choudhury goes on to then highlight specific Islamic sources from the Koran.
He says: “Palestine has been blessed and Locus Sanctus sacredness to it. It’s hard to disengage that textual information from the Koran when it comes to understanding this conflict.”

“There are theological significances to these textual references. The analysis is cast in that theological framework, when it comes to the Muslim perspective the solution will be informed by that theological perspective”

His observation and analysis of the situation was initially ambiguous it lacked a clear and basic argument. He got lost in the analysis of the terms and showed that being a PHD lecturer does not necessarily mean you have a clear and coherent point to make. His opening speech goes as follows: “ If I can borrow a post-structuralist term, currently there is a narrative that couches the solution to be through the agency of extra regional agents. Now what does that mean?”

His words not mine!!!!

If you know you’re going to have to explain your point and break it down so students and us mere mortals understand what you are talking about. Why make the statement at all. I’m not taking away from his idea it’s just the unnecessary language that he uses.

It dehumanises the actual conflict in the Gaza Strip. The language used transcends the reality of what is happening to thousands of people.

He goes on to explain his point thankfully!!

“The regional conflict in the Middle East the narrative the story that’s going on the climax the resolution to that narrative the solution to that problem lies in extra regional agents, that is for example the US or a mediated institution like the UN. So their intervention is what will bring the climax to that narrative, the narrative is conflict the problem is the conflict in the Middle East. The solution will be brought be an interventionist policy

By referring to the Gaza Strip conflict as requiring a climax to the narrative it reminded me of an English Literature essay I once wrote. That argued all good Shakespearean plays need a climax so that the equilibrium to the narrative can be restored.

Thing is if we start looking at the Gaza strip conflict in terms of the narrative and climax are we running the risk of failing to engage with the reality of the situation? While we see scenes of destruction through the media if we only think of it in terms of the narrative are we missing the point and allowing ourselves to be desensitised.