Letter: Has the Gaza war really ended?

More than 1,200 casualties, including hundreds of children, show that no one can be sure how long this catastrophe is going to last. It seems that the entire world’s eyes are pinned on what is happening in the Gaza strip day by day.

Israel and Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire. But does it mean a real end to the current conflict? Of course not.

No doubt these neighboring countries want to achieve a certain political goal, regardless of killing innocent civilians. Just how much do they want to show their anger and hatred toward each other?

There is not even one shred of justice shown, only animosity. In the Gaza strip right now, people are desperately waiting for the end of the war. In fact, it does not even look like a war.
Israel has blockaded the borders of the Gaza strip and the people of Palestine are subject to endless bombardment. Isn’t this a holocaust? Israel and other Western countries declare Hamas a terrorist group and are willing to attack them in the name of justice. How is there any chance, how is it even possible, to seek justice through waging war?

It isn’t, I guess. This repetitious international conflict means heartbreak and bloodshed for both Israeli and Palestinian. In addition, considering the current economic crisis, these two countries are choosing to be dragged down together.

I am very concerned about how much the trauma of war is going to affect people’s lives. I guess that physical scars can be healed and do eventually fade with time but the survivors of the war must feel shell-shocked for the rest of their lives. Above all, how can we make the children of Palestine put all the pain and memories from this meaningless war behind them?

Most people around the world may be busy celebrating New Year’s Day and wishing for a prosperous life. However this year, there is one more thing that we should put on our to-do list.
In addition to issues of nationality, religion and gender, we must think and decide how to educate our young children and protect them from this evil. I cannot even imagine what kind of future lies ahead if children are full of devastating images of this war.

EUNMI KIM
Seoul
The Jakarta Post | Wed, 01/21/2009 10:09 AM | Reader's Forum

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Cigarette fatwa trend?

By Suhadi Cholil

Many ulemas may feel uneasy in facing appeals, including from the National Commission for Child Protection and from Minister of Health Siti Fadilah Supari, who have asked the Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI) to issue a fatwa (edict) declaring cigarette smoking haram. It is not an easy request as many ulemas are heavy smokers and the cigarette industry, directly or indirectly, provides great job opportunities.

What is the relation between cigarettes and a fatwa? Perhaps some people think there is none, but Indonesian discourse eventually shows the connection.

Let us move away from the controversial edict request and focus on the ethical role of religion in Indonesian society. It is true that smoking is very dangerous for human health, but is asking the MUI for a decree the right way to maintain human health?

In fact the MUI's fatwa-issuing history has had different degrees of impact. In some situations they were effective -- for other's, not.

The MUI's 1983 edict that birth control is permissible was perhaps the most successful fatwa in Indonesia Muslim society. This edict endorsed the government's promotion of birth control, against the opinion of some ulemas who prohibited the use of contraceptions and preferred instead that Muslims had more children.

Another powerful fatwa was the 2000 halal food labeling edict, including MUI's issuance of unlawful Ajinomoto (a brand of instant ingredient) with bacto soytone production processing.

There were also toothless religious edicts. Among others were its 2000 edict which prohibits female migrant workers from going overseas and another one in 2006 prohibiting short message service (SMS) quizzes. Although MUI has prohibited women migrant workers from going overseas without mahram (family man) or niswah tsiqah (trusted woman), the prohibition is largely ignored.

As seen by the recent increase in television programs using SMS quizzes (some Islamic television shows are also doing the same) as well as individuals, it appears this edict is also being ignored.

Will the cigarette edict -- if it is truly issued -- have a significant impact in the reduction of cigarette smoking in Indonesia? It is not easy to answer, but it is important to notice that not all of MUI's religious decrees are in fact an effective means for the public engineering of Indonesian Muslim society.

It's also important to note that the Indonesian cigarette industry provides many jobs. For example, Gudang Garam, a tobacco company in Kediri East Java, employs around 40,000 workers. A religious decree on prohibiting cigarette smoking will face a dilemma, i.e., support a health principle on one hand but work against social economical order on the other.

That is why, when MUI announced two weeks ago it would issue the fatwa, there were protests from tobacco farmers and cigarette companies. Tobacco farmers in Jember protested it due to loss of employment for farmers and workers in the cigarette industry.

On the same day, Garda Bangsa in Sumenep Madura, a youth wing of a traditional Muslim association, representing tobacco farmers in Madura, protested the proposed edict.

Issuing a fatwa prohibiting cigarette smoking without looking for ways to solve a possible unemployment problem exchanges one social problem for another one -- namely no jobs for many members of the working class.

The fatwa will provoke controversy within Muslim society itself. It is no secret that many kyais (traditional ulema) and santris (traditional pious Muslims) smoke a lot of cigarettes. If MUI issues the said edict, then the greatest challenge will be to change the smoking culture among the ulema themselves.

To an extent some local kyais and santris have economical connections with the cigarette industries as company owners or tobacco suppliers. In addition, the smoking tradition has been deeply rooted in Indonesian Islamic society for more than a century.

One last important point: It is a matter of fact that issuing a fatwa prohibiting cigarette smoking has become a popular trend in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and other Middle Eastern Islamic countries. Therefore, perhaps we need to look at the relationship between this idea of issuing a fatwa and the current development of Middle Eastern "right wing" Islamic thinking in contemporary Indonesian society.

Perhaps what Indonesia needs is stricter law enforcement such as what is practiced in Singapore, rather than an edict declaring cigarette smoking haram.

The writer is a lecturer at the Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies, Gadjah Mada University and a Ph.D. Student at Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands.
He can be reached at suhadia@yahoo.com

The Jakarta Post Friday, 09/12/2008

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Forget oil, the new global crisis is food

Alia McMullen, Financial Post Published: Monday, January 07, 2008

A new crisis is emerging, a global food catastrophe that will reach further and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen. The credit crunch and the reverberations of soaring oil prices around the world will pale in comparison to what is about to transpire, Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist at BMO Financial Group said at the Empire Club's 14th annual investment outlook in Toronto on Thursday.

"It's not a matter of if, but when," he warned investors. "It's going to hit this year hard."

Mr. Coxe said the sharp rise in raw food prices in the past year will intensify in the next few years amid increased demand for meat and dairy products from the growing middle classes of countries such as China and India as well as heavy demand from the biofuels industry.

"The greatest challenge to the world is not US$100 oil; it's getting enough food so that the new middle class can eat the way our middle class does, and that means we've got to expand food output dramatically," he said.

The impact of tighter food supply is already evident in raw food prices, which have risen 22% in the past year.

Mr. Coxe said in an interview that this surge would begin to show in the prices of consumer foods in the next six months. Consumers already paid 6.5% more for food in the past year.

Wheat prices alone have risen 92% in the past year, and yesterday closed at US$9.45 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade.

At the centre of the imminent food catastrophe is corn - the main staple of the ethanol industry. The price of corn has risen about 44% over the past 15 months, closing at US$4.66 a bushel on the CBOT yesterday - its best finish since June 1996.

This not only impacts the price of food products made using grains, but also the price of meat, with feed prices for livestock also increasing.

"You're going to have real problems in countries that are food short, because we're already getting embargoes on food exports from countries, who were trying desperately to sell their stuff before, but now they're embargoing exports," he said, citing Russia and India as examples.

"Those who have food are going to have a big edge."

With 54% of the world's corn supply grown in America's mid-west, the U.S. is one of those countries with an edge.

But Mr. Coxe warned U.S. corn exports were in danger of seizing up in about three years if the country continues to subsidize ethanol production. Biofuels are expected to eat up about a third of America's grain harvest in 2007.

The amount of U.S. grain currently stored for following seasons was the lowest on record, relative to consumption, he said.

"You should be there for it fully-hedged by having access to those stocks that benefit from rising food prices."

He said there are about two dozen stocks in the world that are going to redefine the world's food supplies, and "those stocks will have a precious value as we move forward."

Mr. Coxe said crop yields around the world need to increase to something close to what is achieved in the state of Illinois, which produces over 200 corn bushes an acre compared with an average 30 bushes an acre in the rest of the world.

"That will be done with more fertilizer, with genetically modified seeds, and with advanced machinery and technology," he said.

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