Muslim Council of Britain's recommendations generate backlash.

Was Muslim guidance reasonable?

Muslims demand "Taleban-style" conditions in British schools.

That was the Daily Express' version of new guidelines for schools from the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). In fact, there was no reference to the Taleban anywhere in the report. Such are the dangers of polarising this debate by inflated language.

Indeed, the document stressed it was intended as "a source of reference" for schools when reviewing their policies in relation to Muslim pupils. Yet, what presumably upset the Express was the sheer length and detail of the requests that the MCB was making of schools.

Link goes here and a rather related story goes here.

Schools - the centres of learning, the paragons of academic achievement. This is where impressionable children learn the most in their lives, and the environments there are probably the largest influence on their lives at their age. Therefore, radical changes there are likely to beget even larger change in the student population.

Islam and Muslims - a large worldwide ethnic group, infamous for its conservative views on women, fasting, and so on and so forth. While not all terrorists and conservative groups are Muslim, many famous cases, like the aforementioned Taleban, or Fatah, or Hezbollah, all rather well-known to the world, are. To be fair, I have known few Muslims, and the above comments may seem unjustified to some, perhaps many.

When the two collide, it is imaginable that many sparks caused by the friction are likely to fly around, and perhaps even set some figurative fires alight, generating controversy. So it is not too difficult to see that the Muslim council's "recommendations" are likely to generate a generous amount of backlash.

Some of the terms in these suggestions range from amulets with Koranic verses being allowed, to boys being allowed to wear beards, to contact sports being limited to single-gender groups, to banning communal showering, to excusing pupils from swimming during Ramadan for fear that swallowing water would break their fast.

This begs the significant question: How far should institutions go in order to accommodate racial, social or perhaps even political groups? This, surely, is not merely a problem with Muslims, or Islam. This is a global problem, with groups ever seeking acceptance, while others would block such attempts.

However, acceptance can also be taken to extremes, where requests for tolerance can become excessive demands to create a more comfortable existence than others. Therefore, to make a true multiracial society stable, the fine line between the two must be found and drawn. This is especially so in multiracial Singapore, where the government at times struggles to find a balance between ethnicities.

While racism is necessarily a bad thing, exactly how far is out of taste? Racist jokes are abound in many primary and secondary schools, and some members of the minorities vehemently oppose such jokes, others are "fine with it", and take them in their stride.

Therein lies the difficulty in trying to accommodate minorities. Some will say that certain practices must be accepted, while other do not think much of whether these practices are all that necessary. Personally, I believe that while we should try to integrate minorities more, we still can remove practices that only a small amount of minorities believe to be necessary, and friendly jabs are still in taste. Were there no offense in jokes, they would cease being funny.

This brings one back to the issue of schools. I believe that in the end, schools should have the final authority on whether or not a certain policy is logical and should be admitted; after all, they have the most experience on these matters

The first article

BBC NEWS, 9 - 2 - 2007: N Korea talks enter crucial phase

Delegates at six-party talks in Beijing have held a second day of negotiations on North Korea's nuclear programme. They are discussing a draft agreement which reportedly calls on Pyongyang to shut down its nuclear facilities in the next two months, in exchange for aid.

Along with:

BBC NEWS, 7 - 2 -2007: Food aid key to N Korea talks

As six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear programme resume in Beijing, the BBC's Penny Spiller considers whether food shortages in the secretive communist state may have an impact on progress.

Links are here and here.

North Korea, which supposedly launched a test nuke four months ago, is now being engaged in six-party talks to bring down its nuclear programme. These will supposedly be "helped" by the starving population of the People's Republic who will require large amounts of suspended food aid in order to keep alive.

While it is correct and justified to take nukes from near-insane dictators of real-life dystopias, one nevertheless has to think about the kind of workings that could even possibly lead up to a scenario as bizarre as this. Going at length about the Korean War of the 1950's, causing the emergence of the DPRK, would be facetious, along with the United States' development and controversial use of the nuclear bomb, which has led to the proliferation of nukes the world over.

However, the key point of this shall be about the presence of autocracies, and the widespread attempts to create and develop a nuclear bomb by so many "rogue states".

Why do dictatorships arise? People who, reeling from the disasters of war or internal conflict often look for strong leaders. However, many strong leaders are often power-hungry, and they reform the nation so that they alone rule the nation: and the people go along with it, believing their Big Brother capable of single-handedly ruling the nation.

Such dictatorships collapse when the dictator passes on, leaving command to an unsuitable follower. In the Protectorate (of England), and the Soviet Union, and North Korea this has happened, and now The People's Republic faces starvation.

So much for autocracies. Nuclear weapons are also another key problem of this modern age, where men seek to destroy each other with bigger and bigger missiles. Apart of the Powers of the Cold War, other nations have developed nuclear technology: India, Pakistan, Israel, Iran and North Korea.

Nuclear proliferation began in the Cold War, when Allies collaborated with each other to out0gun the USSR, while the Soviet Union created thousands of nuclear weapons based on stolen technology. When the Cold War collapsed, the age of nuclear weapons did not die with it; it still flourishes, as can be seen.

The technology of nuclear weapons, once made, was not difficult to deduce, and was quickly realized as a fast means to ultimate power by other nations. Which nation does not want power, after all? Nevertheless, those who had nuclear weapons to start off with denounce this kind of behaviour, and attempt to ban other nations developing such technology.

This strikes one as unfair. Is it moral to have nuclear weapons on the basis that one had them first? Is time, then such a damning factor to those who wish to follow in such footsteps? Or is it simply yet another case of big countries bullying smaller ones? Thus when we look upon the current debacle surrounding North Korea's nuclear programme, we may well ask ourselves: Were it another nation in the People's Republic's positions, would we be so quick to impose a damning judgement on it?

And thus it beginneth

Hello, I'm Al, and I'm supposed to do up a blog for an English project. Seriously. Analyses of news articles,. around 300-500 words long, and teo by the end of this term. What is the English Programme coming to these days? Better and warmer were the times of endless tests and exams, of projects that involved written work...oh well. Don't set your hopes up too high; this blog'll probably die at the end of the project.