Is Tikkun’s Mark LeVine the same guy who…?
by: Dave Belden on July 11th, 2009 | 1 Comment »
…writes about Heavy Metal in Islam? He wrote that Tikkun editorial criticizing Obama’s Cairo speech?
Yup, that’s him. And you can talk with him Monday night on our Phone Forum. We’ll discuss Obama’s approach to the Muslim world and Israel. Mark’s a professor of Middle Eastern history at UC Irvine. Somewhere in the hour we might even get to talk about his latest book:
“We play heavy metal because our lives are heavy metal.” -Reda Zine, one of the founders of the Moroccan heavy-metal scene
“Music is the weapon of the future.” -Fela Kuti
An eighteen-year-old Moroccan who loves Black Sabbath. A
twenty-two-year-old rapper from the Gaza Strip. A Lebanese singer who quotes Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.” They are as representative of the world of Islam today as the conservatives and extremists we see every night on the news. Heavy metal, punk, hip-hop, and reggae are each the music of protest, and in many cases considered immoral in the Muslim world. This music may also turn out to be the soundtrack of a revolution unfolding across that world.
One of the practical tools for peaceful solution is a transport network that performs role of “Guarantor of Societal & Commercial Cohesion. In (peakoil.net) articles 374 & 1037, respectively, find notes on renewable generated electricity linked to railway systems, freight & passenger. Expanding on these modest pages, see Christopher C. Swan’s “ELECTRIC WATER” (New Society Press, 2007). Counterintuitive as electric railways running on renewable may seem in the oilpatch setting, it is in fact on current agendas. Looking at ways and means of circulating Palestinian civilians (farmers, students, maintenance trades, commuters family visits) smoothly sans checkpoints has put railways on the table.
Jastrow’s circa WW I book, “The War and the Bagdad Railway” mentions use of the Turkish Rail line, running to Mecca & Medina, as a regional unifier. Called the”Pilgrim Railway”, or Hejaz railway. The use of railway, as separate “Second Dimension Surface Transport Logistics Platform”, is suited to creation of no-exceptions demilitarized links for people & goods without permitting weapons or devices of war. Dedicated corridor with Holy sites of Jerusalem, Mecca & Medina as termini would make possible an enforceable demilitarized role for these rail connectors of the Palestinian enclaves.
Former British Prime Minister Blair has talked of railway mode in meetings on solutions, and renewable energy applications with localized mobility is well covered in Swan’s ELECTRIC WATER. Shall Tikkun’s core leadership would be able to examine the railway as a tool for peace in these troubled place? Mr. LeVine?
Maybe, Afghanistan’s Khyber Pass Railway could be rebuilt as initial step for another de-militarized Muslim “Pilgrim Railway” link to the Holy sites as well, speeding departure of the US military. Peaking OIl seems reason enough to look at renewable energy propelled transport wherever issues of economic reconstruction is needed, even in a domestic stimulus package…