Jed turned four (months’ old) last week.  But before that, he caught a nasty bug that was hitherto unknown to both Joyce and I - fake measles - which, I think, caused him to lose his voice and wheeze rather uncomfortably at night.  Which in turn meant that we didn’t get much sleep either.

This traumatic the-first-time-your-baby-falls-sick episode is, thankfully, over, and here are pictures of a happier and healthier Jed, photogenic as ever.

As part of the survey that I am doing now on the Islamic faith, I’ve started on No god but God, by Reza Aslan, an internationally acclaimed scholar of religions.  The author has an interesting, I suppose post-modern (I am not sure if this is the right term), perspective of religion, believing that religion is not grounded in fact, but is about faith in an interpretation of fact (however flawed).  And so he writes in his prologue that

Religion, if it must be understood, is not faith.  Religion is the story of faith.  It is an institutionalised system of symbols and metaphors (read rituals and myths) that provides a common language with which a community of faith can share with each other their numinous encounter with the Divine Presence.  Religion is concerned not with genuine history, but with sacred history, which does not course through time like a river.  Rather, sacred history is like a hallowed tree whose roots dig deep into primordial time and whose branches weave in and out of genuine history with little concern for the boundaries of space and time.

…

The fact is that no evangelist in any of the world’s great religions would have been at all concerned with recording his or her objective observations of historical events.  They would not have been recording observations at all !  Rather, they were interpreting those events in order to give structure and meaning to the myths and rituals of their community, providing future generations with a common identity, a common aspiration, a common story.  After all, religion is, by definition, interpretation; and by definition, all interpretations are valid.  However, some interpretations are more reasonable than others …

This is of course a very attractive view of religion, because if all religions are mere interpretations of history (however flawed), all interpretations would be valid, and no single interpreation can claim to be absolutely correct.  It then follows that the believers of different religions should no longer clash over the differences in their beliefs, because no one is absolutely wrong or right.

Attractive as this perspective may be, I do not think it is correct.  The objective of any religion is to proclaim truth (I may be wrong, but I would like to know which religion admits that it is proclaiming a lie).  That being the case, the purported events which a religion’s teachings are based on cannot be a lie; it must be based on fact.  In my opinion, once the purported events are a lie, the teachings are not entirely trustworthy, so why believe in that religion ?  That religion might make an interesting study, but it is certainly not one I would commit my life to, as its dubious accuracy would offer little assurance of entering heaven in the afterlife. 

With regard to the (Christian) Bible, I agree with the author that parts of it are about the interpretation of events from a spiritual (as opposed to a non-spiritual) perspective.  Therefore, the Bible attributes David’s victory over Goliath and in other battles to his faith in and obedience to God, rather than good luck or clever strategy.  But as far as I can see, these events are real.  They might not be recorded with the precision demanded of a historian today, but they actually took place.  That is why the Bible, and Christianity, is not inherently unbelievable.

Turning to the subject of the book, it was interesting to learn from the author that some cherished beliefs in Islam are based very loosely (if at all) on fact.  Here are some excerpts from chapter 1 and 2 :

The notion that a young pagan Muhammad could have been scolded for his idolatry by a Hanif flies in the face of traditional Muslim views regarding the prophet’s perpetual monotheistic integrity.  It is a common belief in Islam that even before being called by God, Muhammad never took part in the pagan rituals of his community.  In his history of the prophet, al-Tabari states that God kept Muhammad from ever participating in any pagan rituals, lest he be defiled by them.  But this view, which is reminiscent of the Catholic belief in Mary’s perpetual virginity, has little basis in either history or scripture.  Not only does the Quran admit that God found Muhammad "erring" and gave him guidance (93:7), but the ancient traditions clearly show Muhammad deeply involved in the religious customs of Mecca : circumambulating the Ka’ba, making sacrifices, and going on pagan devotional retreats ….  Indeed, when the pagan sanctuary was torn down and rebuilt (it was enlarged and finally roofed), Muhammad took an active part in its reconstruction.

All the same, the doctrine of Muhammad’s monothistic integrity is an important facet of the Muslim faith because it appears to support the belief that the Revelation he received came from a divine source.  Admitting that Muhammad might have been influenced by someone like Zayd [ a pagan ] is, for some Muslims, tantamount to denying the heavenly inspiration of Muhammad’s message.  But such beliefs are based on the common yet errorneous assumption that religions are born in some sort of cultural vacuum; they most certainly are not.

…

Like so many prophets before him, Muhammad never claimed to have invented a new religion.  By his own admission, Muhammad’s message was an attempt to reform the existing religious beliefs and cultural practices of pre-Islamic Arabia so as to bring the God of the Jews and Christians to the Arab peoples. … As uniquely and divinely inspired as the Islamic movement may have been, its origins are undoubtedly linked to the multi-ethnic, multi-religious society that fed Muhammad’s imagination as a young man and allowed him to craft his revolutionary message in a language that would have been easily recognisable to the pagan Arabs he was so desparately trying to reach …

…

If the childhood stories about Muhammad seem familiar, it is because they function as a prophetic typos : a conventional literary theme that can be found in most mythologies.  Like the infancy narratives in the Gospels, these stories are not intended to relate historical events, but to elucidate the mystery of the prophetic experience. … The historicity of these topoi is irrelevant … What is important is what these stories say about our prophets, our messiahs, our kings : that theirs is a holy and eternal vocation, established by God from the moment of creation.

[ Blog author's comment : Here I would point out that while the infancy narratives in the Gospel do function, as Aslan notes, as a prophetic typos, they have no parallel in other religions existing at that time.  In other words, the Bible did not have to "borrow" the story of a miraculous birth from some other religion to legitimise Jesus Christ's messiahship.  In this connection, I would add that much of the miraculous (eg. virgin birth) and not-so-miraculous (eg. born in Bethleham) events surrounding the birth of Jesus were a fulfillment of many prophecies in the Jewish scriptures, and Judaism was of course the religion that Jesus was born into. ]

…

Muslim tradition has tended to focus on al-Tabari’s definition of iqra ("recite"), mostly to emphasise the notion that the prophet was illiterate, which some say is validated by the Quran’s epithet for Muhammad : an-nabi al-ummi, traditionally understood as meaning "the unlettered prophet".  But while Muhammad’s illiteracy may enhance the miracle of the Quran, there is no historical justification for it. … The fact is that it would be highly unlikely that a successful merchant like Muhammad would have been unable to read and write the receipts of his own business …

Putting a cap on makes Jed look Japanese …

We haven’t been putting up pictures of Jed because the camera had been sent for servicing (dirt on lens).  Now that we got the camera back, the snapping continues …

There’s a heated debate going on at Tomorrow.sg over how appalling it is that Singapore is not a party to the Ottawa Convention (otherwise known by its longer name as the 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer or Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction).

Naturally, all the armchair general-idealists in Singapore and elsewhere think that Singapore is being so uncool. Landmines are such wicked weapons. Singapore still has landmine stockpiles. How unglam, right ?

While I don’t think anyone denies that landmines can have very cruel effects on its unintended victims (such as civilians that step on an unmarked mine), I found much of the responses on the forum highly emotional and hardly intelligent.

Some armchair general-idealists wrote that because landmines can’t prevent or win wars, there’s no point in deploying them. Well, the same reasoning applies to any weapon you use. Singapore should just burn all its apaches, F-16s, tanks and rifles, because there’s no guarantee that we won’t be overrun by the enemy even when we use them.

Some armchair general-idealists pointed out that when we lose to the enemy, little boys and girls from Singapore will be made to clear minefields deployed by us. While that’s a valid concern, it is (1) an international / war crime to make little boys and girls clear minefields and (2) if you think the enemy is capable of making your little boys and girls clear minefields, they would be capable of worse atrocities than from making them clear minefields. That being the case, I’d rather deploy mines since it gives me a better chance at repelling the enemy, and keeping my kids safe.

One armchair general-idealist pointed out that mining all the "beaches and coasts would be prohibitively time-consuming and pointless". Well, I think we should shoot the SAF general that proposes to mine all beaches and coasts. If the enemy is not likely to land on Sentosa, I expect that Sentosa beach isn’t going to be mined. I expect a defending army to mine very specific areas so that it can delay the enemy’s advance, or divert the enemy into an unmined area of strategic disadvantage.

The same armchair general-idealist said chemical and biological weapons are not prohibited by international law. I would like to know if we live on the same planet. (See ICRC website for details).

Another armchair general-idealist said that "a sensible commander would win the war without foot soldiers and compel detractors & the local populace to march across the minefield". Of course, in any war, the armed forces would try to first gain air and naval superiority, and send in the armour before finally moving in its foot soldiers to do the mopping up operations. (It isn’t always so simple, as the second Gulf War has proved). But should that not be possible, and when it seems that a position may be overrun, it may be helpful to have mines at one’s disposal. Again, making civilians or for that matter POWs clear mines is an international or war crime.

Some armchair general-idealists expressed doubts that Singapore would mark its minefields - a requirement under international law - claiming that "Singapore only observes international law when it benefits from it". I think a more accurate statement is that Singapore only signs treaties that benefit it; is there any country that does not ?   Do you sign contracts that don’t benefit you ?  But quite apart from treaties, my understanding is that Singapore adheres to international law as a matter of principle. To do otherwise is to dig our grave as victims of other states’ arbitrariness in their conduct of foreign relations. In any case, if Singapore really wanted to violate the international law on mines, it would have signed the Ottawa Convention and continued stockpiling mines.  No need to be honest about our intentions and decline to sign the Convention.

Other armchair general-idealists seem to be quite challenged when it comes to dates. One said that it was horrible that Singapore could have sold mines to Iraq, which is nonsense because the only time Singapore could have sold mines to Iraq was before the first Gulf War, which took place well before the Ottawa Convention was drafted, and at that time any country could have sold mines to Iraq. Others pointed that regardless of what international law requires, unmarked mines are lying around in Cambodia and maiming civilians, which is also nonsense because the Convention on Conventional Weapons, which arguably reflects customary law and which requires the marking of minefields (amongst other things), was only ready for signing in 1980.  The Cambodian conflict took place before that.

Finally, some armchair general-idealists seem to have problems grasping the fact that treaties generally are not law, except for the countries that sign it.  To put it simply, as Singapore has not signed the Ottawa Convention, it is not violating international law, and it is entirely within Singapore’s right not to sign the Convention.

Having read all the comments, I question if people are emotionally attracted to the idea that it is cool to ban the use of mines (just like free speech is "cool" but not always the smartest idea), rather than level-headed about the use of weapons in accordance with international law should a war unfortunately occur.  (BTW, mines or no mines, civilians always get killed in a war, which leaves me confused in regard to those who write as if civilians don’t get killed by other weapons in a war).  And so I felt compelled to add that

"not everyone who comments here has done NS - some are foreigners without a stake in defending the country, some are too young, some may be women, and some are just "combat clerks". Since you holier-than-thou idealists are not going to spill blood defending the land, I’d just like to inform you that, in the face of an attack, I would very much prefer be defending a position with, than without, a minefield between me and the enemy".

Note : To anyone who wants to comment more intelligently on this issue, I suggest reading this first.

Sex sells.  Ever since I mentioned "Tammy" in passing in my previous two posts, I noticed that first time visitors have all been pointed to this blog because they were searching for "Tammy" and variations thereof.