Conferences Books

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is the biggest inter-governmental body of the Islamic world. It has 57 Muslim states as members in its folds with another three in observer capacity. It was established in 1969 when the Muslim leadership met at Rabat for the first Islamic summit to express solidarity against the Zionist action of arson at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. From then on, it gradually expanded both in scope and activities.

Today, the Organization can boast of four principal organs. The triennial Islamic Summit is the top decision-making body. It has held nine regular and one extraordinary sessions so far. The tenth Islamic summit is scheduled for December 2003 at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The next is the Islamic Foreign Ministers Conference, known as the ICFM, an annual feature of the Islamic Conference. So far 28 regular and 11 extraordinary ICFMs have been held. The third principal organ is the Islamic General Secretariat, presently temporarily located at Jeddah, `pending the liberation of Jerusalem' which will be the OIC's permanent seat. The present Secretary General Abdul Waheed Belkaziz of Morocco is the eighth person to head the OIC Secretariat. The fourth and the last principal organ of the OIC, the Islamic International Court of Justice (IICJ) could not start functioning as yet, for want of necessary number of ratifications from the Muslim States.

In addition, there are around 44 subsidiary organizations under the OIC umbrella including permanent committees, specialized committees, specialized organs and affiliated institutions etc. Some prominent examples are the Islamic Development Bank, the Islamic News Agency, the Islamic Solidarity Fund, the Organization of Islamic Capitals, the Islamic Sports Federation, the Al-Quds Committee and various Islamic universities etc.

With such an impressive set-up, why has the OIC not become the United Nations of the Muslim World? Why has it not solved the various conflicts in the Muslim world? Why does it seem to be so impotent?

The questions like these have been answered for the first time by a new book by a young Pakistani scholar, Saad S.Khan. A momentous research volume, `Reasserting International Islam' is a new addition to the stream of knowledge about Islam and the modern political world. The book has for the first time filled the lacuna in the world of documented knowledge about the largest intra-Islamic world body.

Not only that, he for the first time discusses the role and activities of all the OIC organs and even various islamic organizations outside the OIC circle like the Rabita Alam al-Islami and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) etc. Compared to the earlier volumes on the topic, most of which are short monographs, the book is the only comprehensive work on Islamic organizations. In fact, it is a reference encyclopedia on the Islamic world bodies.

The book consists of three parts. The introductory chapter of the book sets the theme of the discussion by starting the debate on the Islamic concept of `ummah'. The author cites many writings on the subject to bring home the different connotations of the term with special reference to its use in the texts of Koran and the Hadith. The chapter also deals with the question as to whether the OIC is the modern day replacement of the Islamic institution of Caliphate.

The part I of the book deals with the OIC--- its origin, its structure, its bureaucracy (life-sketches of all the OIC Secretary Generals are also given), its political history and the most interesting chapter about the problems and weaknesses of the organization. The Part II of the book deals with 30 leading Islamic institutions of the Islamic world both within the OIC framework and outside it.

The concluding chapter is based on the assessment of the Islamic organizations, their current role and the future scope. This is the most interesting chapter where the author frankly gives his opinion about the future of the ummah. He agrees that the OIC is not the United Nations of the Muslims but avers that the significance of the OIC lies in the vast potential that it has, if its weaknesses as identified in the book are removed. Saad Khan believes that the structure of Muslim organizations is so elaborate that it leaves not much to be desired but the need is to make this more responsive to the Muslim needs in the current times.

The last part of the book is composed of annexures. It contains the OIC Charter, the Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, the final communiqués of all the Islamic Summit Conferences held hitherto and many charts about the Muslim composition in the country-wise population of different parts of the world. This coupled with detailed list of Abbreviations, an elaborate Glossary and a comprehensive Bibliography enhance the worth of the book. This third section, in fact, makes the book a required library item and a compulsory reference for anyone who wishes to embark on any topic of research related to the modern Muslim world.

Here a word about the author, Saad S.Khan, is a bureaucrat by profession but a scholar by temperament. His published research papers and his lectures on Islam and international politics in universities in different parts of the world, are well-acknowledged now. He calls this book his labor of love.

To gain an insight into his thinking, one is tempted to specially mention the chapters 6 and 8 in Part I of the volume under review. The former gives a political history including the Palestine dispute, the Bosnian tragedy, the Iran-Iraq war etc. The account is lucid, argumentative and convincing. For instance, he blows the myth that Muslim world has done nothing for the cause of Jerusalem. About the Iran-Iraq war, he narrates in detail the efforts by the Muslim ummah to bring about a cessation in fratricidal hostilities and laments the fact that the two sides lost a lot by not heeding to the OIC peace initiatives. He also tells us the true and heretofore hidden story about how the Muslim world saved Bosnia from extinction. The chapter also discussed the Islamic worldview on major questions including `terrorism', `human rights' and `disarmament'.

The chapter 8 goes on to identify the major problems that have compromised the effectiveness of the Islamic Conference. He proves that financial quagmire is the biggest impediment in the way of an effective OIC. He then recounts various incidents showing, what he calls, the bloc-politics in the Muslim nations. He also tells us how many Muslim states compromised Islamic aims on the altar of petty national interests.

One tends to recommend the book, a fruit of many years of research, to both the pessimists and the optimists about Islamic revival. The book has brought a refreshing objectivity to the topic. It is a boon to the students and scholars alike and will be of ample use for the policy-makers also.

The foreword of the book has been written by John L.Esposito, an authority on Islam, in the United States. A noted scholar and an author of eight valuable books on Islam, Dr. Esposito is a professor at the Georgetown University and the Director of the Centre for Christian-Muslim Understanding. I would conclude my review with his view that whatever shape the concept of Islamic Ummah-hood takes in the future, Saad Khan's book would remain a required reading.

The essays in this collection are mostly in English with two in Italian. They are well edited and represent readable discussions of the impact upon studies of Aristotle during the Renaissance revival of new sources for Greek commentaries of the Philosopher and the Greek text without the intervention of Averroes.

This book is a collection of Chandler's essays that have been published in various journals over the years. Chandler is a Business Historian at Harvard. My favorite essay is "The Role of Business in the U.S.: A Historical Survey" originally published in "Daedalus" in 1969. In it, Chandler says that business went through four stages: 1) from merchant to wholesaler; 2) from wholesaler to manufacturer; 3) from manufacturer to manager; and 4) from manager to sharing w/government. The last is probably synonymous with corporatism.

Merchants were pre-1800 and were Hamiltonians who called themselves Federalists, but were actually opposed to federalism and wanted a strong central government instead.

Wholesalers were financiers of long-term growth from 1800 to 1850. They pressured the state and municipal governments to issue or guarantee bonds. They even persuaded the state to build and operate transport facilities, with the average man footing the bill. Wholesalers were sectional, not national, which was evident in wholesalers versus planters (North versus the South).

From 1850 to 1900, manufacturers rose to dominance. Wholesalers were no longer needed. Bankers and railroads along with vertical consolidation caused the demise of the wholesaler. High start-up investment made entry difficult. During this time, the corporate mode of business oranization began growing in popularity. It was easier to move up through the military-like ranks of a corporation than to make one's own business. It is interesting to note that by 1894, U.S. output equalled that of Britain, France and Germany combined!

From 1900 to the Present, the manager mode arose because businesses were being swallowed by corporations. And corporations are not operated by the owners; they are operated by hired managers. Managers are an economic elite, according to Chandler. They used government to finance their projects (public money is the average man's money), used government to protect them from foreign competition, and used government's central banking system beginning in 1913.

In the 1930s, Chandler detected government cooperation with corporations (or what I would call corporatism). About all Chandler had to say about this early form of corporatism was that corporations were unable to alleviate the Depression, so he favored government intervention as a remedy. It is interesting to note that the government, like its child - the corporation, was just as unable to alleviate the Depression; in fact, government intervention prolonged it.

Chandler ends with his survey without drawing conclusions. He says "Such analyses are properly left to social scientists and businessmen". So he get 4 stars for his history, but not a fifth for failing to interpret what it all means.

This article is freely available on the Real Time Delphi homepage (Google it!). The Real Time Delphi site has other relevant resources, including software to make this method work.

These proceedings contain 218 papers representing the work of authors from countries across the world. These papers cover a wide range of research and applications in safety and reliability issues that concern all types of systems, processes and structures. Some of the topics included are from aerospace, automotive, civil, mechanical, offshore, nuclear, chemical, electronics, software and other types of engineering. These two volumes should serve as a valuable reference on the state of the art of recent developments in safety and reliability.

Negotiate a tentative settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, then find oil under the West Bank. Call a hasty secret conference to settle the impending crisis and hold it on the rural estate of a former senior American government official, situated between two towns in Maine, Frank Mills and Franks Mill, who have been feuding for over a century. Invite some 200 delegates, British, Russian, French, German, Italian, Polish, Egyptian, Saudi, Chinese, and Canadian. (Send the Canadian invitation by mistake to the Premier of Quebec and get two Canadian delegations insisting on attending.) Do not, of course, invite the Israelis, Jordan or the PLO. As Sir Lawrence Bloomsbin puts it, "Never invite anyone directly involved. Too close to the situation, and their presence makes conference protocol even more delicate than usual. The Empire prospered when we ran it as a committee of one. Once we began colonial conferences, consultations and tea with the King, we started becomin' an ex-colonial power. Toss in the CIA, Mossad, the PLO, the IRA, and EUGG (the Ecological Urban Guerrilla Group) and hold the affair in the midst of the annual Middle Maine Seafood Festival. Shake it all up and you have the ingredients for The Secret Conference by Rufus Marlowe. There is a host of comic characters, many of whom are nevertheless human and sympathetic enough that you care what becomes of them. Adrian Peary Delano Shoredice III and his wife, Alice, owners of the country estate and central players in the drama, are three-dimensional people. You have met Greta Mills, First Selectman of Frank Mills, and Alan Pruitt, her counterpart in Franks Mill in numerous small towns, wisecracking and manoevring to get the best of their opponents. The romance between Mary, the enviro-terrorist, and Tom, the large, rural sheriff, is unusual but appealing. The author is a humorist and a gentle satirist, whose ear for dialogue allows him to catch and satisfyingly exaggerate national and occupational styles, from the extremes of Washington bureaucratise - "Satelliting those modalities into the process caused a severe reprioritizing of the then decision-making system" - as Gaylord Beauregard, aide to the Secretary of State, puts it, to the down-to-earth repartee of the rival town authorities - "You control the ferry and the only place it can dock. We own most of the island. What would you do if we ran a jeep road down to the water, put in a causeway and held the festival without you?" "I'd take my outboard through the mud flats at thirty knots," Moodie promised grimly. "The lake'd most probably blow up and even if it didn't, the stink'd last a month." As the delegates work for a solution to the Palestine problem - out in the middle of Mud Lake with a wire twisted around the propellor of their boat, the Russian, Grishinko, asks,"Vy will Israel accept half loaf ven can steal whole bakery?" Adrian couldn't resist. "Because the middle yeast will rise against them if they do Š" The whole is complicated with several unusual romances and all comes to a successful conclusion in a most satisfying way. I was reminded of P.G. Wodehouse and Stephen Leacock, but the author adds a military flair and an understanding of the bureaucratic mind which give verisimilitude to a highly unlikely series of events. Enjoy yourselves!

Messrs. Seaxton and Betts, editors of the AMERICAN ARCHITECT magazine in 1927-30, compiled this originally two volume display of photographs, drawings, plans, and renderings of some 100 then new theatres. It is a somewhat technical gallery of how architects met the challenge of designing theatres for the multiple use concept then becoming commonplace, but its multitude of photos will delight anyone interested in the physical nature of theatres. This one-volume reprint contains an added Index to the theatres therein, but the non-glossy paper is not as faithful to the photos as is the glossy paper of the first edition, still to be seen in some libraries. Still, the first edition is absolutely unobtainable, and this edition is more than adequate! The 342 pages of this handsome hardbound book should please anyone who loves beautiful theatres as well as the somewhat technically oriented text. There are, of course, a few typos such as the caption being wrong for the lower left photo on page 58 of "book 1" (section) which is identified correctly on page 15, and the photo on page 28 of "book 2" (section) is really the MIDLAND THEATER, Kansas City, MO. The accuracy of these and other details can be verified by the Theatre Historical Soc. of America in Elmhurst, IL. Especially for would-be architects, this will take one into a dreamland of fantastic architecture which is now seeing some of the theatres pictured herein restored to usefulness, and this volume will generate a longing for the delightful aura of lavish (and not so lavish) movie palaces and theatres from the recent past. Had color photos been available at that time, this book would deserve 5 stars! This volume's worthy successor is the title: "BEST REMAINING SEATS: The Story of the Golden Age of the Movie Palace" (1961), or its later reprint edition: "The Best Remaining Seats: The Golden Age of the Movie Palace"(1987), both available here at Amazon.com. While not an architect's book per se, it is the seminal historic work in the field and not to be missed.

To an observer from the Cold War, these Pugwash Proceedings of 1996 might have seemed as the fevered dreams of world peace. Set 5 years after the collapse of the unlamented Soviet Union, when Russia and the US had begun a massive build-down of their nuclear arsenals.

But the participants at these Proceedings are unsatisfied. Several articles discuss the fear of nuclear proliferation. India and Pakistan are mentioned prominently and presciently. Only a few years later, both would detonate fission bombs.

Not all the papers concern nuclear weapons. Conventional weapons also figure. Like perhaps outlawing land mines? Or more effective peacekeeping in Africa? There are even articles on global warming and its possible geopolitical impact.

The papers can be read by a general audience. No specialised background is needed. But an index to the book would have been nice, given its size.

This book is that rare find - Jewish holiday content that isn't cloyingly, annoyingly Jewish.

I think you've seen the other kind of books - "Tim's Family Seder" where some dull kid shows off his family customs, or "A Child's Passover" with boring illustrations and jerky rhymes (hopefully these aren't real titles, just examples!).

Here, the Bogots offer gentle, slightly-fantastical short rhymes that take us step by step through seder ritual, showing similar behaviour in the animal world - we wash our hands, raccoons wash their hands.

Sometimes the connection seems a little weird ("Horses gallop, horses neigh... taste horseradish the Pesach way." - get it, horses, horseradish?), but by and large, this book is a pleasure to read and the rhymes delightfully refreshing.

This book would also make a lovely Passover gift item for hosts with young children (ages 2-6).

Like every Siggraph preceedings this one present a broad range of ideas that present new ways of accomplishing graphical effects on a computer. THe more memorable ideas presented included Non-Photorelistic rendering.