Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of "crackpot" than the stigma of conformity. -- Thomas J. Watson, Sr.
Sometime I wonder: what if I got that job at Goldman? (Note: I lectured the interviewer on the merits of Value Investing—he was a commodities trader, ha). http://www.nymag.com/nymetro/news/bizfinance/biz/features/15197/
This is hilarious! http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051212/kvh (dictionary on page 2)
This is very exciting!
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- For the first time in Saudi Arabia's history, voters went to the polls over the weekend to choose from a list of candidates that included women http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/11/27/news/saudi.php
This WSJ article talks about Déjà vu and offers a few explanations. Very interesting.
WSJ.com - Turkey, Talk, Family: One More Reason It All Seems Familiar*
Relying on its ability to find ever greater numbers of "investors" in its stamp business, Spanish company Afinsa seems to be running a glorified, albeit legal, pyramid scheme, promising current investors guaranteed rates of return. What happens when the mania turns south? Full Article
I really cannot believe I wrote this essay more than two years ago (almost three). Not that it’s well-written, but the content is well, prophetic! I remembered it today and after reading it I got depressed. http://www.wts-online.com/before/essays/04012003_4.htm
Check this out!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4608329
And please sign this petition, I know you might think it won’t have an impact, but it will only take 30 sec of your time and at least it might work.
Abumuhareb recommended this page in a comment to my last post; I just wanted to post it on the front page to make it easier.
Every time I visit the Unites States someone comes to be upon my return and asks if I’ve been harassed and lectures me why I should ever go because we’re treated unfairly and they don’t "give" us any rights. Well, I might not be treated as well as a
When Free Citizens Are Fired Upon
This is a very fascinating article about how we evaluate the information we receive as to whether it is true or false, I highly recommend reading it.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” -- Albert Einstein
Foreign Policy ran an interesting section in its September/October issue called “Endangered Species”, here’s how they describe it:
What are the “endangered species” in our midst? When FP first arrived on the scene in 1970, few would have predicted that, 35 years later, the Soviet Union would have closed up shop, or that the person handling your customer service requests would be sitting in
Very interesting, I believe.
This just in from the Washington Times:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20051112-123734-4633r.htm
Here’s a very interesting blog I just found. It’s new but if the blogger continues with the same style and content it will be really great. So keep up the good work, Annoyed Saudi!
Peter F. Drucker, the political economist and author, whose view that big business and nonprofit enterprises were the defining innovation of the 20th century led him to pioneering social and management theories, died yesterday at his home in Claremont, Calif. He was 95. Full Article.
If you’re a billionaire already, good for you, but how long did it take you to get there? Compare yourself to the billionaires in Forbes list of the fastest-to-a-billion.
This is just crazy! I don’t care what those idiots in our courts think but I don’t believe Islam would allow this!
In a comment to an earlier post Hosam asked what I thought about Islamic Banking versus “Conventional Banking”. This is a very controversial subject, but a very important one. I started getting interested in Islamic Banking in 2002 when I came across a few papers written by non-Muslim economists about Islamic Finance & Economics and how it applies to Banking. The papers looked at the Islamic economic model as an equity-based model with all economic activity funded by ownership capital (equity) and no-debt. Those papers tried to develop the theoretical foundations of Islamic Economics and understand the intentions and implications of such a system. However, this approach has gained very few followers. Dar Al Istithmar, a newly-established think tank that tries to develop the theoretical foundations of Islamic Banking, hasn’t done much either in my opinion. I’ve had a chat with its Vice President, Dr. Humayon Dar, in an Islamic Banking conference in Bahrain a few months ago and it seems to me, from what I heard from him and other participants in the room, that no one is interested in that approach. The reason I believe no one wants to spend time building this theoretical foundation is because (1) It takes too long and (2) it means you have to reform your whole economy and laws, and most people don’t want that. So, what did they do instead? The looked at conventional financial products (eg. credit cards) and tried to see how they can use Islamic legal contracts (usually in combination) to re-create the same product and the same outcome.
Let’s take an example. Let’s say you want $100 today. You go to an Islamic bank and they’ll give it to you and you would have to pay them back $110 next year. Of course, they don’t call it interested nor does the contract say that. Instead, they go through a series of transaction (buying Platinum for a future price and then getting “permission” from you to re-sell it a second later at today’s price, then turning around and giving you the cash). We can argue whether niyyah (intention) is the most important thing, but in this case—a legal and economic system—I don’t believe your intention is the important factor. When Islam prohibits stealing, it does so regardless of your intention, if you steal a bank and tell the police that you thought you were doing good it doesn’t change the prohibition of the act, it may change how God views you, but on Earth its irrelevant because it’s a crime. Riba has been portrayed in Quran as a crime, and prohibited because of its social ills. Therefore, what you were thinking when you charged/paid riba does not change its legal status since we’re talking about a law here. In addition, once you learn that it is riba you have no excuse whatsoever. So, if I have two transactions, one called “interest on credit card” and the other is called “insert-any-old-Arabic-word” with the exact outcome, the exact cash payments by both sides, and they look exactly the same short of what happens in the bank’s back room, how come one is acceptable while the other is not? To me, if you’ve got the same outcome, you’ve got the same thing, regardless of how you write the contract.
One objection to my argument was presented by Dr. Dar of Dar Al Istithmar, he says that when two parties have consensual sex what they write in the contract is important. If there’s a marriage contract between them, it is accepted, and if not it is prohibited. This is the best argument I’ve heard so far, but I believe it is flawed for the following reason: sex wasn’t prohibited because it is intrinsically evil like riba was (at least that’s what I understand from all the verses prohibited riba), it is the context of sex outside wedlock that was prohibited. Therefore, in what context (in or outside marriage) sex occurs, is fundamental to whether sex is evil or good. Sex was prohibited conditionally (outside wedlock) while riba was prohibited unconditionally. As a result, the legal context of where/when/how riba is charged is not important to whether it is acceptable or not in Islam.
The bottom line is that Islamic Banking as it is practiced today (at least what I came across in Saudi) is similar to conventional banking in its outcome and should carry the same Islamic “status” as Conventional Banking. There might be another way of applying Islamic Banking, but I still don’t know how it can be done (or whether it can be done), we’d have to wait until a theoretical basis for Islamic Economics and Finance is developed first before we can judge that. Until then, don’t lie to yourself and pay more money to banks that have found that they can charge more if they add the word “Islamic” to product’s title. It’s all marketing, that’s my opinion.
Habits help us through the day, eliminating the need to strategize about each tiny step involved in making a frothy latte, driving to work and other complex routines. Bad habits, though, can have a vise grip on both mind and behavior. Notoriously hard to break, they are devilishly easy to resume, as many reformed smokers discover. Full Article
Once the sun sets in the Arab world, the 30 days of Ramadan are like November television-sweeps month in the
This year there are dozens of mini-series and specials ranging from the story of an Arab living in post-9/11
"Wallowing in the past may be good literature. As wisdom, it's hopeless."
--Aldous Huxley
Eid Mubarak everyone. I’ve just published my first annual book list, check it out here.
Here is a very interesting article (at least to me) about improving the boarding time on planes and how new mathematical models prove that conventional methods (back to front) is not the fastest way to board a plane. WSJ.com - Plane Geometry: Scientists Help Speed Boarding of Aircraft
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