Today is Holocaust Memorial Day, marking the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. If the point of HMD seems a little fuzzy or remote, the following episode of the outstanding World at War series may serve as a reminder. I should point out that some of the material is graphic and distressing.

In today’s Comment is Free, Jason Burke ponders various reactions to his Observer article on suicide bombing and attempts to fathom it.

Being called both a propaganda mouthpiece of “the war on terror” establishment and a hand-wringing liberal sympathiser with suicide bombers and evil Muslims suits me fine.

Why this should suit Burke, or anyone, isn’t made entirely clear, and to dismiss the writer as either of the above would be faintly ridiculous. Burke is often quite good on the political and social dynamics of extremism. What has very often been missing – conspicuously – is adequate reference to the role of theology as a key motive and the way Islam is taught and conceived by a great many people. As I argued at length here, the size of an extremist “fringe” and how it relates to mainstream conceptions of the faith, and its history, is a matter of some importance and has to be considered as it actually is, not as one might wish. And, as Tawfik Hamid, Tanveer Ahmed, Hassan Butt, Tahir Aslam Gora and others have explained, omitting the role of Islamic theology, whether for reasons of ignorance, ideology or embarrassment, leads one to inaccurate or simply perverse evaluations of what we are faced with and how it might be stopped.

Burke registers this omission:

What my piece in the Observer does lack, and it is something I was very aware of, is a section dealing with the role of Islamic theology in the process of radicalisation I was exploring.

But offers a less than satisfying explanation:

A longer version of the article – and here, no doubt, some will see evidence of either the politically correct Guardian–Observer liberal complex or the imperialist-capitalist state’s censorship or similar – did include a substantial section discussing this issue. But space in Sunday newspapers is, sadly, not unlimited, and my editors felt that most readers, in between Ikea and a post-lunch walk, would not be riveted by a long discussion of the concept of Dar ul-Harb Takfir, the argument over whether the Sword verses cancel out other, earlier Qur’anic verses, or concepts of nationalism in modern Islamic political thought. I do not think they were necessarily wrong.

But here’s the thing. If Islamic theology is deemed unlikely to rivet readers of the Guardian and Observer, then those same readers are necessarily ill-equipped to fathom Islamic radicalism, its ambitions and associated atrocities. If the subject is ignored and omitted as dry, somewhat esoteric and ever so slightly bonkers – as indeed it is – then those doing the ignoring and omitting are in a poor position, perhaps no position at all, to hold opinions of any seriousness on the phenomenon’s “root causes”.

The Red Russian Army Choir and the Leningrad Cowboys are happy together. (h/t, Dr Westerhaus.) // Dr Strangelove transcript. (h/t, Coudal.) // Stanley Kubrick: The Invisible Man. (1996) Excellent documentary. Part 2. (h/t, The Thin Man.) // Film directors, directing. // Tarkovsky bloopers. Oh, how we laughed. // The passage of time may not be what it was. // Hinode telescope footage of the Sun’s chromosphere. More. // Volcanic plume on Io. // Bearded men of the 21st century. (1939) “The man of the next century will revolt against shaving.” // Mark Steyn on the wrongs of Canada’s Human Rights Commission. // And on the right kind of imperialism. // Mr Eugenides on Seumas Milne. // Norman Geras on double standards. // Why Martin Luther King was a Republican. Discuss. // The H-Bomb and You. (1954) // BSG season 4 preview. // Everything you need to know about Lost in 8 minutes 15 seconds. // Dante’s Cove. What Torchwood wishes it was. (h/t, The Thin Man.) // Jerry O’Connell does Tom Cruise. Wait for the laugh. // Scientology documents. “Between 38 trillion years ago and present time a lot of off-beat implants can be found.” // Reconstructing shredded Stasi documents. “We all knew they could know everything. But we didn’t understand what that meant until that moment. Suddenly it was palpable.” // How to peel potatoes. (h/t, Grow-a-brain.) // A toilet seat for cats. $109.95 // And, via The Thin Man, it’s all about appearance.

Morten Postrup has a rather fine collection of patterned Swedish book covers, 1950 -1962.

Related. Via Coconut Jam. 

With Dr Westerhaus in mind, here’s Miss Brigitte Bardot performing Serge Gainsbourg’s Contact, circa 1968. The dress is by Paco Rabanne, who designed the costumes for Roger Vadim’s Barbarella, released the same year, and the sculptures are the handiwork of the late Nicolas Schöffer. Note this was filmed before Miss Bardot’s more recent excursions into space.

Via io9.

I’ve mentioned Tawfik Hamid before and his latest article, a first hand account of the development of a jihadist worldview, is well worth reading. Hamid explains how his own religious education laid the ground for his later involvement with the terrorist group, Jemaah Islamiya. Here’s a brief extract:

I attended the private Al-Rahebat primary school in the area of Dumiat, which is about 200 kilometers north of Cairo, when I was six years old… Before each Islamic lesson began, the teacher would dismiss the Christian students, who were then obliged to linger outside the room until the lesson was over… it was the first time I perceived that my Christian friends were not my equals… In secondary school I watched films about the early Islamic conquest. These films promoted the notion that “true” Muslims were devoted to aggressive jihad… 

I remember one particularly defining moment in an Arabic language class when I was sitting beside a Christian friend named Nagi Anton. I was reading a book entitled Alshaykhan by Taha Hussein that cited the Prophet Muhammad’s words: “I have been ordered by Allah to fight and kill all people [non-Muslims] until they say, ‘No God except Allah.’” Following the reading of this Hadith, I decisively turned toward Nagi and said to him, “If we are to apply Islam correctly, we should apply this Hadith to you.” At that moment I suddenly started to view Nagi as an enemy rather than as a long-time friend…

These doctrines [of jihad] are not taken out of context, as many apologists for Islamism argue. They are central to the faith and ethics of millions of Muslims, and are currently being taught as part of the standard curriculum in many Islamic educational systems in the Middle East as well in the West. Moreover, there is no single approved Islamic textbook that contradicts or provides an alternative to the passages I have cited.

The whole thing.

A flavour of the school textbooks to which Hamid refers can be found in an essay I posted here last year:

During a recent visit to San Francisco, the Dalai Lama told a group of religious leaders that “[Islam is] like any other tradition – same message, same practice. That is a practice of compassion.” Certainly compassion and horror can be found among adherents of any religious ideology. But there is a difference between monstrous acts that ignore or invert the exhortations of a religion’s founder and monstrous acts that are entirely in accord with that founder’s stated vision.

For instance, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood directs young believers to a children’s website that celebrates homicidal ‘martyrdom’, just as Muhammad is said to have done, and exhorts young Muslims to imitate a prophet who “waged jihad against the infidels.” The site also informs youngsters that “the Jews” are responsible for all of the “corruption and deviance in the world” and that “murdering children” is “part of the Jewish religion.” It’s not clear how this message is to be reconciled with the Dalai Lama’s statement, or with the claims of the Brotherhood’s vice-president, Khairat el-Shatir, who, in an article titled No Need to be Afraid of Us, informed Guardian readers that “the success of the Muslim Brotherhood should not frighten anybody; we respect the rights of all religious and political groups.”

The Dalai Lama is presumably unaware of the severe limits to compassion demanded by several Islamic schoolbooks. One Egyptian textbook, Studies in Theology: Traditions and Morals, Grade II (2001), cites Muhammad and reminds children of their duty to “perform jihad in Allah’s cause, to behead the infidels, take them prisoner, break their power and make their souls humble…” (pp 291-22). Young readers are also reminded that “the concept of jihad is interpreted in the Egyptian school curriculum almost exclusively as a military endeavour… It is war against Allah’s enemies, i.e., the infidels.” Another cheering gem, Commentary on the Surahs of Muhammad, Al-Fath, Al-Hujurat and Qaf, Grade II (2002), warns youngsters against being “seized by compassion” towards unbelievers.

Contempt for non-Muslims is also commonplace in Saudi school textbooks. In July 2004, the Guardian reported the persistence of supremacist indoctrination, despite assurances to the contrary from the Saudi foreign minister. Six-year-olds are instructed that “emulation of the infidels leads to loving them and raising their status in the eyes of the Muslim, and that is forbidden.” Similarly xenophobic instructions have been found in contemporary schoolbooks in Palestine, Jordan and Pakistan, and in judicial texts endorsed by Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the nearest thing to an Islamic Vatican. Again, the size of an extremist ‘fringe’ and its relationship to mainstream conceptions of the faith have to be considered as they actually are, not as one might wish, or assume.

Andrew Bostom has more.

Tawfik Hamid is the author of The Roots of Jihad. His writing and audio material can be found at his website.

Related. And.

Thanks to The Thin Man, I rediscovered Jim Schnabel’s charmingly bizarre documentary, The Real X-Files. Originally broadcast by Channel 4 in August 1995, the film investigates the U.S. military’s Cold War research into extrasensory perception as a tool of espionage. By turns intriguing and hilarious – part pure bonkersdom, part genuine puzzle – the film can be viewed in full below. Be sure to keep an eye out for Sergeant Mel Riley and his impressive feathered headgear.

First, here’s a short preview:

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Part 1:

Remote viewing. “Disrupt individuals.” Ingo’s target. Reading name tags.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Part 2:

“Like Kryptonite.” Random numbers. Volcanoes and atom bombs.  “Undesirables.”

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Part 3:

Stubblebine and spoon bending. “Psychic blowjobs.” Chasing ETs. Tuning in.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Jim Schnabel is the author of Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies.

More on SRI’s “remote viewing” project can be found here. 

(h/t, The Thin Man, keeper of the archives.)

Vintage colour photographs of American cities. Chicago, Baltimore, New Orleans. (h/t, Grow-a-brain.) // Radical cosmetics. Stem cells, skull lifts, harvested buttocks. // Micrograph beauty contest. Behold the nanotoilet. // 80 million tiny images. // A gallery of psychics. But you knew that already. // Virtual TR-909 drum machine. // Sandstorm, Khartoum. // Plantage. // The politics of Doctor Who. // 2007: a year of BBC impartiality. // Alan Johnson upsets Guardian readers. “The left takes its cue from what it is against rather than what it is for.” // Ophelia Benson on the difference between civility and respect. // Philip Carl Salzman on Muhammad’s tribalism. “Most accounts of Islamic history… glide over these conquests, as if they were friendly takeovers.” // Andrew Bostom on Steven Coughlin. // Jonathan Fine on terrorism and beliefs. “Downplaying religious inspiration for terrorism… is both inaccurate and dangerous.” // Deogolwulf on dreams of a world government. // On Hollywood bad guys. // Masked hoodie. Fight crime, scare the elderly. // A fan obsesses over the Spider-Man theme tune. Lousy cartoon, groovy music. (h/t, Coudal.) // Heroes action figures. Man bags, brains and a Japanese Elvis. // Still life foodscapes. (h/t, the EQ-aliser.) // The world of Spam. It’s a versatile product. (h/t, Dr Westerhaus.) // A small house made of meat. // Jackie Gleason meets LSD. // And, via The Thin Man, the agonies of youth. Lovely.

U.S. researchers said on Tuesday they have made the darkest material on Earth, a substance so black it absorbs more than 99.9 percent of light. Made from tiny tubes of carbon standing on end, this material is almost 30 times darker than a carbon substance used by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology as the current benchmark of blackness. And the material is close to the long-sought ideal black, which could absorb all colours of light and reflect none…

The substance has a total reflective index of 0.045 percent – which is more than three times darker than the nickel-phosphorous alloy that now holds the record as the world’s darkest material. Basic black paint, by comparison, has a reflective index of 5 percent to 10 percent. The researchers are seeking a world’s darkest material designation by Guinness World Records. But their work will likely yield more than just bragging rights. [Dr Pulickel] Ajayan said the material could be used in solar energy conversion. “You could think of a material that basically collects all the light that falls into it,” he said…

The researchers have tested the material on visible light only. Now they want to see how it fares against infrared and ultraviolet light, and other wavelengths such as radiation used in communications systems. “If you could make materials that would block these radiations, it could have serious applications for stealth and defence,” Ajayan said.

More. 

Further to this comment on the obligation to “mingle”, and via the Devil’s Kitchen, here’s Madsen Pirie on bright children as collective property. 

“It is wrong to allow bright children to go to special schools. This deprives the ordinary schools of their beneficial influence.”

If you regard children as the property of the state, existing to serve it, then it is explicable why the bright ones should be regarded as a scarce commodity, and rationed accordingly. The idea of allocating their “beneficial influence” equally through society follows from the same twisted logic. It is a pity that this is only applied to intelligence. Why should not the good-looking children be shared out equally, so their peer group has equal access to the pleasant sight of them? Perhaps the kind ones should be spread so that all may benefit equally from their sweet disposition?

The vicious notion is that children, whether bright or not, should be regarded as the instruments of the ends of others, instead of ends in themselves. Children do not exist to serve the purposes of the state; it is the other way round. The concern should be with what is of benefit to the individuals concerned, rather than with how they can be made to serve some ideological view of society. Behind the idea often lurks the doctrine of egalitarianism, and the feeling that children really ought not to be brighter than each other. With this comes the determination that nothing should be done to encourage it.