In Moslem countries, a man called a Muezzin will call from the mosque to summon the faithful to prayer. This call, or azzan, goes on five times a day. In countries with a more eclectic religious community, this sort of thing can sometimes cause annoyance. And in more secular countries, it can be a downright nuisance, especially if you're an atheist looking for a lie-in on a Sunday morning.
In Christian Norway, a long-running dispute in Oslo has be resolved by allowing Moslems to broadcast a call to prayer. In this age of wireless telecommunication, the Carny doesn't understand why they can't just page the faithful! Having said that, there are a couple of rules.
First, the call must not be above 60 decibels. Second, the Atheist Society will be allowed to have a similar broadcast, except that their message will be “God does not exist!”.
According to Jan Willy Lyng, a representative of the Oslo council, “to give fair treatment we had to say ‘yes’, but I don't think these atheists actually will climb on top of the roof and shout too often.” Unless they decide to have a tape-recorder set-up that works automatically. Are you reading this, Norway?!
Presumably the real fun starts when other religions decide that they also want to shout from the rooftops. And what about Satanists? Hey, we've got to be fair about this, haven't we?
Recent elections in Iraq have been a major boost for Saddam Hussain's son, Odai Hussain. Odai stood in a Bagdhad constituency and won the highest number of votes of all candidates. The Justice Minister, Shabib Lazem al-Maliki, didn't give the actual figures for the victory, but fortunately the state-supported newspaper, al-Ittihad, in true “truth-at-all-cost” manner reported the figures; 99.99%.
Hey, he must be one hell of a popular guy! When US candidates are fighting nip-and-tuck battles where a couple of percentage points can mean the difference between winning and losing, good old Odai only seems to have about 10 people in Bagdhad to worry about. And perhaps his Dad could help straighten these people out...!
Iraq's parliament, the National Assembly, has 250 seats. The ruling Baath party had 165 candidates and, uncannily, won all of them. Another 55 “independent” seats were filled by non-Baath representatives. Then there are 30 seats for the three autonomous Kurdish provinces. Because Iraq is sort-of a democracy, there is a sort-of electoral process for the Kurdish seats - Saddam Hussain appoints them personally.
But although there are free-elections, the real power is held by the Revolutionary Command Council, headed by - yes, you've guessed it, Saddam “the mother-of-all-democrats” Hussain. Keep it in the family, Saddam!
The April edition of the UK GQ magazine includes a free copy of its new offering, GQ Active, a sort of Men's Health for the Conde Nast set. In it there is a wonderful list of figures that are guaranteed to promote discussion with your friends. For your delight and edification, here they are, courtesy of that magazine.
They also offer an article that highlights four adventurous sports and rates them in terms of sexiness. Top of the list is surfing, followed by rock climbing, then mountain biking, and unsexiest of all is canyoning. Pedants may want to remind the writer of the article that surfing in LA takes place on “Huntington” beach, not “Huntingdon” beach, as writer Sean Newsom calls it. “Huntingdon” is the name of the constituency that was represented by the ex-UK Prime Minister, John “Prince of Grayness” major, who probably never read a copy of GQ in his life, nor took part in any sport sexier than cricket!
And just in case the UK editor of GQ is reading this, we want to offer one comment about the direction the magazine is going; the line between your periodical and soft porn is now so dangerously thin that it is one nude short of the top shelf!