The terror of anti-terrorism laws and why Facebook, Twitter and Google’s fail to protect privacy

Over the past couple of days I have seen quite a few articles in which people have been complaining about Facebook invading people’s privacy, being creepily Big-Brotherish and encouraging online stalkers. The tide also seems to have turned against Google, with the ever-unpopular Street View cameramen admitting that they had “inadvertently” downloaded private data from household Wi-Fi networks, including sensitive information such as passwords and e-mails.

It’s no secret that law enforcement officials and security forces the world over can or will soon be able to hack into anyone’s Facebook, Skype or e-mail accounts and collect data such as private conversations, photographs or status updates to gather information about suspected criminals.

The trouble I have with this is: how do officials decide who is a potential criminal or terrorist? Do they use racial and religious profiling? For over twenty years, key-word technology has been developed as part of state security. Mention the word “bomb” or similar such terroristy word over the internet, the phone or in a text or e-mail and a little red flag is raised somewhere on a server.

Of course, most of the time it’s a false alarm. Nevertheless they must be looked into, which takes up time and resources. And the technology has to get more and more sophisticated as the years go by, because more and more people are getting connected and internet traffic is growing exponentially year-on-year.

The anarchist in me would suggest that everyone should put the word “bomb” in every single e-mail you send out and say it on every single phone call you make, and if millions of us do it, it might make their servers explode and their operations director commit suicide.

However, the real threat to our privacy is not just Facebook, but the whole kit and caboodle. Facebook, Twitter and Google and the millions of app developers and advertisers watching your consumer habits. Turning your computer on or using your mobile phone means that you are leaving a trail of your behaviour on servers all over the world. Your IP address. Your friends. Your shopping habits. Your Google searches. Your location. You think that just because your “add your location” option on Facebook is disabled that no-one will know where you are?

Puh-lease, biatch.

Everyone’s cellphone is a tracking device. GSM technology allows network providers to track the location of a mobile phone using cell tower triangulation methods. Even if you have a Nokia 3310.

Most passports are now so-called biometric or electronic passports. These passports contain RFID chips which can be read from up to 30 feet away, enabling your personal information to be read and updated on a central database without your knowledge whenever you are travelling with your personal documents. And those are just the RFID chips we know about. There may very well be others that we are not aware of, hidden away in things we would never suspect.

Calls can be tapped and Facebook/Twitter communication can be logged. Even Voice-Over-Internet Protocol (VOIP) calls such as Skype can be monitored, recorded and traced.

I would say that Twitter is becoming a larger threat to privacy than Facebook. With the new revamped version of Twitter, conversations between groups of people can be seen and analysed, and multimedia platforms are available on separately-developed but interlinked applications. The more worrying aspect of Twitter is that most people’s Twitter accounts are public, meaning anyone can see them, whereas the vast majority of Facebook accounts are protected by privacy settings.

Some people can Tweet up to 100 times in one day, leaving nothing about themselves to the imagination but the regularity of their bowels. That means that just about anyone can get a good feel of who you are, what you do and what your political stance is just by reading your Twitter feed.

Naturally, there will be a mindless sheep here somewhere saying, “but if you haaaaaven’t done aaaanything wrong, then you don’t have aaaaaanything to fear.”

Well, you smug little anal-retentive government-employed drone, you are more plastic than flesh and bone. Every normal person has something to hide, whether it is a big something or a small something. Everyone has committed some kind of a sin that they wouldn’t want the entire world knowing about. Everyone is guilty of something and hopes that they are clever enough to fool the world into thinking that they are moral, law-abiding citizens. There is no such thing.

The wonderful thing about life is that mistakes and bad judgement can be left in the past and there is always the opportunity to turn over a new leaf. But that was before governments got all 2.0. Now, nothing will be forgotten.

In the United Kingdom, the deceptively-named “Interception Modernisation Programme” (IMP) will require all mobile phone and internet service providers to collect and store the "traffic details" of all internet and mobile phone use in the country. In the face of several concerns about this legislation, there have been a sudden slew of terrorism scares, from a crazy old lady who stabbed her MP to printer ink cartridge bombs defused “seconds from detonation” at UK airports. Convenient, eh? I get the feeling that the laws will be pushed through in the wake of the Islamophobic hysteria, as it always is, and we are once again stuck with a law that has stripped us of our privacy and placed us inextricably in the Orwellian sphere.

Statistics released by the British government suggest that under the Regulatory Powers Act of 2000 (RIPA) – meant to combat terrorism - one in every 78 people is placed under state-sanctioned surveillance each year, with well over half a million official requests to access private information by councils, police and other officials in 2008, for infringements of the law such as benefit fraud, illegal fly-tipping and bringing a dog into the country illegally.

And the worst part? People who were found to have done nothing wrong, not even to have breached a council by-law, are not entitled to be informed that they were the subject of a surveillance operation.

Between CCTV, credit and debit cards, cookies on our computer, wiretaps on the phones and RFID chips in our documents, the net is closing in on Joe Soap, not Osama bin Laden. And governments all over the world are using terrorism as an excuse to ensure that no deed, good or bad, goes unpunished. And of course there is reality television to keep us all glued to the box while our civil rights dissolve like ice in the Sahara desert.

The next time Facebook asks you “what’s on your mind?” I’d suggest you think twice before you tell it the truth.

An honest look at Ramadan: finding hope

For many Muslims, Ramadan means different things. It comes around once a year, and each year we find ourselves in a different place than we did the year before. We may be in different surroundings – it may be somebody’s first year as part of a married couple; someone else’s first year as a divorcee. Perhaps it is someone’s nervous first fast in a strange town where they are away from their family, and maybe someone else across the road is feeling reluctant to deprive themselves of food for 30 days.

Somehow though, we always find ourselves hoping that this year will be better than the last. We always promise ourselves in the days leading up to Ramadan that this year we will take the opportunity to be much more pious, we will sit and read Qur’an, we won’t engage in gossip or slander, we really will keep ourselves from getting angry and we will be sitting on that musallah each time the Azaan sounds, five times a day.

By the last week of Ramadan, reality has bitten hard and I think most of us feel quite ashamed to look at ourselves in the mirror because we are all dying for the last ten days to go by already. What amazes me is that there are those who lie through their teeth and say that they are enjoying the last blessed ten days just because that’s what everybody says. Fasting is not the Oxford definition of fun - it’s supposed to be a test that gets harder as your body gets older and more decrepit each year.

Every year we tell ourselves that this is the year we are going to make that positive change for good, that when the month is over, that the Qur’an won’t ever be gathering dust again up on the top shelf, that those skinny jeans will not win over more modest clothing, that we really will indeed this year stop smoking for good.

Then Eid day comes around, and by the time the Zuhr Azaan sounds, we have already forgotten that we promised ourselves we would become permanent five-time namazis.

Round and round we go, each year, making the dizzying transition from gangsta rap to Qari Ziyaad Patel and back again in a matter of weeks. Where does it all end? Will we just stop making the effort one of these years?

There are a number of things that I personally don’t do during Ramadan. I don’t rush through the Arabic Qur’an, with no idea of what I’m reading, just so I can khatam it x amount of times in the month. I don’t spend my day slaving over a stove so that I can lay on a fantastic spread for my family that will go to waste because our eyes are bigger than our stomachs. I don’t spend the month pretending to be more pious than I usually am on any other month in the year. I think those kinds of things defeat the object of what it’s supposed to be about.

To me, Ramadan means a lot of things. Indeed, for me, Ramadan takes on a different meaning every time it comes around. Every year it has taught me a singular, clear lesson, and I believe it does so for everyone who allows themselves a little genuine introspection instead of mindlessly going through the motions and rituals just because everyone else is doing it. If you use Ramadan as a true litmus test for your faith, Allah will surprise and reward you every time.

The fasting month is the holiest of all months in the Muslim calendar. The first surahs of the Holy Qur’an were revealed in this month to the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.) and it continues to be a month where problems are resolved, truths are revealed and beliefs strengthened.

Even if you didn’t accomplish all those things you said you would do during this month and after it, if you came out of it with your imaan strengthened, even if only slightly, wouldn’t you consider your spiritual self to have won a victory against your physical self, even if it is only a small victory? It means you live to fight another day; that you continue to strive towards the Creator despite the difficulties you face.

The philosophical essence of Islam is “surrender” – complete and utter acknowledgement that Allah is the disposer of all our worldly affairs and that He will not forsake us if we ask Him for help, nor give us a burden greater than we can bear. There can never be peace without trust.

I hope that all of you have a blessed Ramadan this year wherever you are. Asalaamu alaikum!

Tuneless Muezzins – criticism IS fair

I read an interesting article today on how Istanbul’s muezzins, after a slew of complaints from local residents, have been sent for voice training classes to ensure that they are able to give a melodic, spiritual Azaan in the correct tempo for the correct time of day.

So why can't we send our South African muezzins for voice training? I don't mean to be offensive, but some of our muezzins here in Johannesburg sound like zombies on tik. If Hazrat Bilal RA could hear them droning on as though they were doing the world a favour, he would be turning in his kabr.

Reading Azaan is an honour and a privilege, and yes, it is a task which many of the modern” in-name-only-Muslims” would never have time to do. It comes with a great sawab, but also a great responsibility.

Done correctly, it has the ability to make the heart of a human being yearn with willingness to prostrate before his Creator, burst to seek the understanding and wisdom of the Universe and bleed at the sheer beauty and inexplicable sadness of the call itself. Done incorrectly, it can make the die-hard Jamat-wallah want to bury his head deep into his pillow and beg for mercy.

At least in Istanbul one can actually complain about a tuneless Azaan and be taken seriously, but any voices of dissent here are drowned in a sea of stubborn dismissals from the ulema as follows:

“Can you do it better? You are welcome to come and try.”

“The muezzin is making a sacrifice in his old age to get up for Fajr and make Azaan. You are being rude.”

“Why are you mocking your pious fellow Muslim who is doing a service to Allah?”

Being “funny” about it doesn’t change the fact that the guy is croaking instead of singing and is turning the faithful into munafiqun instead of turning the unbelievers into Mu’mineen.

When Hazrat Bilal RA gave his last ever Azaan at the funeral prayer of Rasulullah SAW, it was so filled with deep spirituality and love for Islam and the Prophet of Allah that none who stood in the courtyard of the mosque at that moment was untouched. Tears ran down the Jamat’s faces and sobbing filled the courtyard.

Every muezzin should aspire to re-creating that feeling among the members of the Ummah who hears the Azaan. Muslims in South Africa are descended mainly from Indians in Durban and Johannesburg and in Cape Town from Malaya and Indonesia. Correct me if I’m wrong, but people from India are known for their ability to belt out tunes.

Once I heard a Jummah Azaan that was given by an old man who sounded as though he was in sakraat. Halfway through the thing, he came to a stop and began to choke very loudly over the loudspeaker and everyone on the street stopped what they were doing, fearfully wondering if he was going to die mid-Azaan. Luckily, he lived to croak another day.

Why is it that as South African Muslims we have lost our pride to such an extent that being a Muezzin is a “dirty” job, suitable only for old men who have retired and are waiting for death? Or might already have died, judging from some of their voices.

Perhaps another point to raise is that as parents, do we only aspire for our children to become doctors and lawyers, and leave the religious jobs to the retarded ones whose only other option is working in “Deddy”’s hardware store? So is your faith in the material life of this world or in what is awaiting us in the Aakhirah?

Non-Muslims who live among us in our communities must hate us so, so badly.

The question on my mind is: are we ready to change the way we represent ourselves as Muslims in this country? If we put our minds to it, we too can get a trainer to help our faithful old muezzins hit the high notes and train some younger ones the correct way.

Glossary of South African / Muslim terms for Americans and other people on tik:

Muezzin: is a chosen person at the mosque who leads the call (azaan) to the five daily prayers (salat) from one of the mosque's minarets (in most modern mosques, electronic amplification aids the muezzins)
Azaan: the Islamic call to prayers, given five times a day from mosques
Tik: Methamphetamine
Munafiqun: sing. Munafiq – one who is a hypocrite, mocks other Muslims behind their backs
Kabr: the grave
Aakhirah: the hereafter or afterlife
Sakraat – in the throes of death, on one’s deathbed
Mu’mineen (sing. Mu’min) – Believers in the One God of Moses, Jesus and Muhammad (peace be upon them)
Jamat – (collective noun) the attendees of the prayers at mosque
Jummah – the Friday noon prayers
Ulema - religious leaders and scholars
Sawab - heavenly reward

Ten types of South African Muslims

Lately I’ve been having a good giggle over Hamish’s blog and something he said today reminded me that we South African Muslims are stranger than fiction. So, even at the peril of mortally offending everyone’s sensibilities, I have made a tongue-in-cheek list of the different types of Muslims you get in this country. This is by no means an exhaustive list, so feel free to contribute to it in the comments box.

The Dariwallah

This guy wears pyjamas in public and has a long, usually unkempt beard. I’ve seen beards that could hide small mammals in them. Biologists could spend years studying what’s in them. I digress. He usually starts sentences with “Bismillah” and more often than not finds a way to justify his chauvinistic and warped opinions by quoting from an obscure Hadith or from allegorical verses of the Qur’an. Dariwallahs usually find it hard to sit down when speaking. Flecks of foam usually emerge at the sides of the Dariwallah’s mouth and large veins begin to bulge in his forehead and neck when he is riled up, and he usually gets riled up about everything. It’s often a good idea to keep the paramedics on speed dial and sharp objects hidden when trying to defend your non-jamiat approved view of a certain aspect of Islam. Won’t look directly at, speak to or save a woman from drowning because it might awake carnal desires and send him directly to jahannum. The Dariwallah often gets a hard-on from watching the Oprah Winfrey Show.

The Lesser-Spotted Niqabi

The Lesser-Spotted Niqabi is rarely seen in urban areas, and when she does make an appearance, she often seems to labour under the misapprehension that every woman she recognises, even someone she met briefly at a book fair ten years ago, will recognise her simply by noticing her veiled face and muffled voice. In the company of other Muslim females, the niqab comes off and the devil comes out. Possibly the wickedest group of Muslim women I have ever come across. The best place to observe her outside her natural habitat is usually at Adult World, where she can be observed furtively purchasing studded underwear.

The Taliban-Wannabe

Usually young and inexperienced, this boy is typically the son of a Dariwallah. He can be found in sheep’s Western clothing, having developed a severe distaste for his father’s kurta-pyjama from an early age. He normally has a short, neat beard and looks like the kind of boy you’d want your daughter to marry. Until he opens his mouth, that is. Taliban-Wannabe is obsessed with guns, killing people and defending Islam (not necessarily in that order) and often expresses a desire to go to Afghanistan to fight for his Taliban brothers, but will never really end up going. What’s in his pants is normally a disappointment and is the most likely to end up murdering his own wife and kids. Quotes incessantly from the Qur’an but is a notorious skirt-chaser.

The Beauty Queen

Strikingly beautiful, slim and intelligent, this woman is a sight to behold. Sadly, she knows it and will remind you of it every chance she gets. She likes to put millions of beautiful profile pictures up on Facebook so that her army of unattractive male “friends” can gush creepily about how much they would like to get her into bed pretty and amazing she is. She is also fond of updating her status with deep, intelligent statements in the hope that one day, people will like her for her brains and not her beauty. Usually has daddy issues and is cold in bed.

The Player

Not normally the brightest kid on the block, the Player relies on his good looks, pimped ride and the money from Daddy’s hardware store to get him by in life. The Player usually gets married before he develops pubic hair, more often than not to his first cousin in order to keep the money in the family, but doesn’t see that as an obstacle to pursuing his ambition: being the biggest slut on the face of the earth. He has been known in the past to get involved in wife-swapping activities with his Player friends and has a predilection for paying for sex with transvestites. The Player often has nasty personal habits and is most likely to get arrested in a public toilet with George Michael.

The Harassed Mother

The poor soul is worn out from having four to six children and spends her whole life cooking, cleaning up puke, lactating and changing nappies containing sloppy green stools. She lost her figure after the second child, doesn’t have time for makeup and can often be found snoring during sex. She hates her husband for being able to leave the kids behind and go to work. She has forgotten what the second-last kid’s name is and he grows up thinking his real name is Bhaiyya.

The Repressed Nerd

Usually the guy all the girls want to be friends with. Often writes in programming language better than he can write in English. Is obsessed with gadgets and technology and spends hours searching for javascript arrays, SQL injections and porn. Repressed Nerd finds it difficult to communicate human emotions to others. His mother phones him once a week to ask him when he’s going to get married and give her grandchildren. Whenever he works up the courage to make a move on a girl, the typical response includes contorted facial expressions and pepper spray. Will remain a virgin until he realises it’s better to just pay for it.

Manhattan Wife

The Manhattan Wife is usually married to the Player. She knows her husband is a man-whore and sees more vaginas in a week than the average gynaecologist sees in a year, so the only thing she has left is his money. She would be hideous if it wasn’t for her regular visits to the cosmetic surgeon. Fond of Dolce & Gabbana, Louboutins and the South of France. The Manhattan Wife drives a gas-guzzling SUV that is far, far too big for her and wouldn’t know a prayer mat if someone flagellated her with one. Sandton City has given her VIP parking. Often has sex with random people and of course is no stranger to the wife-swapping phenomenon mentioned earlier. Manhattan Wife spends more time in rehab than out and has invariably had butt-fat injected into her lips.

The Sap

The Sap will always work for a fellow Muslim because he has been made to believe it is his moral obligation to be enslaved for a fifth of his market-related salary. Can be typically found working seven days a week in hardware stores, supermarkets and for charitable organisations. Has no ambition and his only thrill in life is from sexually harassing dolly birds at the shop. The Sap thinks it’s his right to steal from his boss because he is paid so little. Is usually married to the Harassed Mother and also can’t remember the second-last born’s name without having to consult the birth certificate folder.

The Hardcore Thinker

The Hardcore Thinker is a woman that will nag and annoy any man or child unlucky enough to be near her to the brink of suicide. She is fond of overly sentimental and hardcore religious status updates and thinks her poo smells like roses. She can often be found lamenting that she is misunderstood. The Hardcore Thinker is very fond of drama and can be found to be stirring pots of shit in a variety of different locations simultaneously. She is not afraid to embarrass others. She tries very hard to give off the impression that she is a serious person who contemplates very serious things all the time. Quick to judge and lose her temper. If any man ever has the balls to dump her she will most likely take out a billboard ad to tell the world how he did her wrong and how small his penis is.

If you have been offended by this blog post it’s a sign that you probably take yourself too seriously. Go and be a Nazi on someone else’s blog.

Some thoughts on the Israel-Palestine conflict

Quotes and prophecies from the Pentateuch (first five books of the Old Testament, thought to have been recorded at the time of Moses)

Genesis 49 – Israel’s prophecy

8 “Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your hands shall be on the necks of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow down before you.
9 “Judah is a lion’s whelp; from the prey, son, you have gone up. He stooped down, he crouched as a lion and as a lioness; who dares rouse him up?
10 “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs (Heb: until Shiloh comes); and to him shall be the obedience of the people.”

Exodus 20 – the Ten Commandments

13 “You shall not kill
15 “You shall not steal
16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour
17 “You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbour’s.”

Exodus 22:21

“You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Leviticus 19

33 “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.
34 “The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.”

Numbers 35

33 “You shall not thus pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of him who shed it.
34 “You shall not defile the land in which you live, for I the Lord dwell in the midst of the people of Israel.”

Deuteronomy 28

47 “Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness and gladness of the heart, by reason of the abundance of all things, 48 therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger and in thirst, in nakedness and in want of all things; and he will put a yoke of iron around your neck, until he has destroyed you.
49 “The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you do not understand, 50 a nation of stern countenance, who shall not regard the person of the old age or show favour to the young, 51 and they shall eat the offspring of your cattle and the fruit of your ground until you are destroyed; who also shall not leave you grain, fruit, wine or oil, the increase of your cattle or the young of your flock, until they have caused you to perish. 52 They shall besiege you in all your towns, until your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down throughout all your land, which the Lord your God has given unto you.
53 “And you shall eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemies shall distress you.
54 “The man who is the most tender and delicately bred among you will grudge food to his brother, to the wife of his bosom and to the last of his children whom he is eating, because he has nothing left him, in the siege and the distress with which your enemy shall distress you in all your towns.
56 “The most tender and delicately bred woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot upon the ground because she is so delicate and tender, will grudge food to the husband of her bosom, to her son and her daughter, 57 her afterbirth that comes out from between her feet and her children whom she bears, because she will eat them secretly, for want of all things, in the siege and the distress with which your enemy shall distress you in all your towns.”


Deuteronomy 32:39

“See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.”

Draw from it what you will…