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How far can obscurantism go?

Taleban militants in north-west Pakistan have threatened to kill girls who attend school.
A local Taleban commander ordered parents to stop sending their daughters to school by 15 January.
In comments broadcast on an illegal radio station, he threatened to blow up schools which enrolled female students.
From the BBC website:

Although schools for girls have come under attack on numerous occasions in the past, this is the first time Taleban militants have issued a complete ban on girls attending them, the BBC’s Ethirajan Anbarasan says.
A Taleban spokesman said the prohibition would remain in place unless and until Islamic sharia law was fully implemented in the region.

The man in the picture — a marvelous photo by Nick Rain — may have nothing to do with all this. But he certainly is a Taleban and for me, his eyes symbolise their blind fanaticism. Being a free-minded man under Taleban rule may not be easy, for women it must be hell.

I know that most normal Islam believers will not be happy with the way the Taleban represent Islam, but why don’t they protest somewhat harder?

I know Peter Ackroyd as the biographer of Thomas More and Chaucer, and I have read his historic novel about a famous archaeologist in The Fall of Troy. So, this man knows his métier.

But this short novel does not really convince, although it has certainly humour and some good ideas. Some being called Plato lives in London AD 3700 and tries to find out how people lived in the past.
This allows Ackroyd to mock the way a whole world is build on very scarce evidence. For instance, a book called The Origins of Species was found. It was a damaged copy and the name on the frontispice only showed Charles D. Without doubt this must be Charles Dickens who lived between the 17th and 20th century. That kind of jokes.

Then out of curiosity, Plato descends in some kind of cave and is able to look at the London of the 20th century. Because of this tresspassing of the city law, Plato is charged with corrupting the young and he has to defend himself before a city court.

This kind of philosophy/science fiction always has the same problem: the novel should paint the normal life in the future, but this is difficult if the author wants to avoid writing a documentary. So, we have to make do with hints and small bits of information. The contrast with the normal life in the future (but strange for us and not clearly pictured) and the abnormal life in the past (our known present) is a difficult one.
Nevertheless, at times it is a fine novel with some satiric questioning of some of our habits.

My weblog is called a common reader, referring to the excellent collection of stories Ex libris, Confessions of a common reader by Anne Fadiman. Obviously, I was interested in this small novel called An Uncommon Reader. I never read anything by Alan Bennett before, but I was told he was he fine humorist. And so it seems.

One day the Queen, while walking with her dogs in the garden, sees a library van and out of curiosity has a chat with the librarian and then, out of a sense of propriety, borrows a book.
Since that day everything changes. She becomes addicted to literature, first reading at random, but later her taste becomes more and more refined. She even visits for the first time her library in the castle and finds that she owns many a precious book.

She starts neglecting her duties to the alarm of her husband and staff. And then the first attempts to boycot her reading habits start. A literary clerk that helped her with her first reading has been transferred. Books disappear.
Engaging and funny. (Does she read at all?)

¿Qué tenemos que pensar de un gobierno que en vez de ocuparse de sus muchos problemas se mete en la poesía? Lee el artículo en El País: El Gobierno de Nicaragua veta a Sergio Ramírez, y la protesta en un mail de Sergio Ramírez:

PROTESTA ANTE UN ACTO DE CENSURA OFICIAL

El diario El País de Madrid ha iniciado la publicación de una serie de antologías de los más renombrados poetas hispanoamericanos, bajo la dirección de José Manuel Caballero Bonald. Entre los poetas escogidos para tener un libro en esta serie, se hallaba el nicaragüense Carlos Martínez Rivas (1924-1998), y el prólogo correspondiente fue encargado a su compatriota Sergio Ramírez.
El gobierno de Nicaragua, que reclama ser dueño de los derechos de autor del poeta fallecido, ha vetado a Sergio Ramírez como prologuista, condicionando la autorización de la publicación de la obra a que sea sustituido. Tanto el diario El País, como el propio Caballero Bonald, han rechazado esta pretensión, y en consecuencia la antología de Martínez Rivas ha sido retirada de la serie, con lo que su espléndida poesía es impedida, por causa de una acción arbitraria, de llegar a decenas de miles de lectores.
Los participantes en la Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara, que firmamos este pronunciamiento, denunciamos este inaudito acto de censura oficial al escritor Sergio Ramírez, que de paso lo es a la obra de Carlos Martínez Rivas, y lo condenamos con toda energía. Ningún gobierno puede arrogarse la potestad de vetar o prohibir la palabra de un escritor, y un acto semejante no puede calificarse sino de totalitario.
Invitamos a otros escritores, intelectuales, artistas, periodistas y editores, a sumarse a este pronunciamiento.

Guadalajara, diciembre de 2008.

(Los nombres aparecen en el orden en que las adhesiones se han sumado)
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Ik had dit boek al een tijdje in mijn bibliotheek staan, maar durfde er eerlijk gezegd niet in beginnen lezen. Ik had er wat in gesnuffeld, en vreesde dat het me te erg zou pakken.
Maar onlangs zag ik de prachtige film Der Untergang terug, en toen ik die beelden zag van burgers in een vernield Berlijn dacht ik terug aan dit boek, dat me een noodzakelijke aanvulling van de film lijkt. Hitler werd al genoeg gefilmd en beschreven.

Een vrouw in Berlijn is een zeer sterk relaas van de laatste dagen van Berlijn in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, bekeken door de ogen van een dertigjarige vrouw die niet anders kan dan de gebeurtenissen ondergaan.
Ergens schrijft ze dat de overlevenden terug tot holbewoners zijn geworden: schuilend in kelders en krochten, zonder elektriciteit, gas, water, steeds zoekend en vechtend voor water, brood, vet.
En dan komen de Russen, met nieuwe wetten, met massale verkrachtingen, maar ook met eten.

Wat vooral bijblijft is de totale eerlijkheid van deze dagboekschrijfster tegenover zichzelf. En bovendien de enorme wil om te overleven, om alle vernederingen en ontberingen om te zetten in nieuwe levenskracht. Haar motto: ‘wat me niet ombrengt, maakt me sterker’.
De talloze vrouwen komen er ook zeer sterk uit, dit in tegenstelling tot de (Duitse) man die er verslagen en hulpeloos bijloopt.
Het is een aangrijpend boek, dat toch, ondanks alle wreedheid, een grote troost geeft en een geloof in de sterkte van de wilskracht van de mens.