Raw! Raw! Raw! That’s The Spirit! Right?

The raw food lifestyle has inspired an enthusiastic, soul-stirring movement across the globe and much of this excitement can be credited to Cherie Soria, who instructed and encouraged a host of devoted followers, entrepreneurs, and fledgling chefs.

Fueled by her desire to bring good health, weight loss, energy, and a youthful constitution to millions, Cherie joined with Brenda Davis and Vesanto Melina, both registered dietitians, to lead the way toward a raw food health revolution.

The raw-food movement continues to make converts, thanks to a devoted group of individuals and celebrities who embrace the belief that an all-raw food diet is the best diet. The idea that stirs the most enthusiasm for this diet is the contention that cooking both destroys about fifty percent of the nutrients in food, and destroys all or most of the life promoting enzymes. Raw-food enthusiasts commonly make the claim that “cooked foods are dead foods.”

But, are cooked foods really dead foods?

Many people advocate eating raw food because animals eat raw food and stay healthy, or because raw foods contain a little more of some nutrients. However, the subject is more complex.

We are not like the animals. We think more, we worry, we go to work and do not sleep enough, and most people’s digestion is weak, unlike that of the animals.

Vegetarian animals, in particular, often have very complex or multiple stomachs, such as cows and goats, in order to digest raw vegetables. Human beings lack these.

For hundreds of thousands of years the evolving human race had eaten its food raw, but at some time between the first deliberate use of fire–in Africa in 1,400,000BC or Asia in 500,000BC (depending on which theory happens to be the flavor of the month)-and the appearance of the Neanderthals on the prehistoric scene, cooking was discovered.

Whether or not it came as a gastronomic revelation can only be guessed at, but since heat helps to release protein and carbohydrate as well as break down fiber, cooking increases the nutritive value of many foods and makes edible some that would otherwise be inedible.

Improved health must certainly have been one result of the discovery of cooking, and it has even been argued, by the late Carleton Coon, that cooking was the decisive factor in leading man from a primarily animal existence into one that was more fully human’.

Whatever the case, by all the laws of probability roasting must have been the first method used, its discovery accidental. The concept of roast meat could scarcely have existed without knowledge of cooking, nor the concept of cooking without knowledge of roast meat.

Eating raw food is necessary for good health and is an important feature of a healthy diet. But that does not mean that one’s entire diet has to be raw to be in excellent health. It also does not mean eating an all-raw diet is the healthiest way to eat. It is healthier to expand your nutrient density, your absorption of plant protein and your nutrient diversity with the inclusion of some conservatively cooked food in your diet.

Generally speaking, the larger the mammal, the larger its brain will be. Humans are a bit of an anomaly among primates, however, because we have the largest brain and number of neurons, but not the largest body. Great apes, for instance, have much bigger bodies than humans, yet much smaller brains.

How humans came to be so well endowed in the brain department has long been a mystery – but many theories abound, including the predominant one of access to animal-based omega-3 fats from seafood.

Another theory suggests it may, in fact, be cooking that allowed humans to develop so much brainpower.

Your brain is a major consumer of the calories you consume in a day. Even though it makes up only about 2 percent of your body mass, it uses 20 percent of your calories!

The size and number of neurons in your brain is, therefore, largely dependent on the number of calories you can consume in a day. Ancient humans had to graze constantly to find enough calories to live on, much the way apes and gorillas do today. There are only so many hours in a day, and raw, mostly vegetable, foods do not contain many calories, which together put a metabolic limitation on how big the brain could grow.

Researchers believe that it was the shift to a cooked-food diet that gave humans the extra calories they needed to allow their brains to get bigger.

“Absent the requirement to spend most available hours of the day feeding, the combination of newly freed time and a large number of brain neurons affordable on a cooked diet may thus have been a major positive driving force to the rapid increased in brain size in human evolution,” the researchers noted.

They speculated that gorillas would need to spend another two hours a day eating to gain the extra caloric intake to allow their brains to grow as big as humans’, and pointed out that the cooked foods were likely easier to chew and digest, and may have released more calories in some cases.

In 2008, researchers similarly concluded that human brains “smartened up” – allowing for the use of tools and the creation of art and religion – due to the extra calories that became available when cooked food became widespread.4 Eating cooked meals, they said, would have lessened the energy needs of the human digestive system, thereby freeing up calories for the brain.

Gathered around a blazing fire, our ancient ancestors probably huddled to pass the archaic kebab, munching cooked meat and figuring out how they might share it and plan to get more of it. Eating cooked food allowed these early hominids to spend less time gnawing on raw material and digesting it, providing time–and energy–to do other things instead, like socialize. The strenuous cognitive demands of communicating and socializing forced human ancestors to develop more powerful brains, which required more calories–calories that cooked food provided. Cooking, in other words, allowed us to become human.

A new paper examines the metabolic restrictions of a raw diet, and suggests that our primate cousins are limited by their inability to heat their dinners. It bolsters the cooking hypothesis of Richard Wrangham, a primatologist and professor of biological anthropology at Harvard who believes cooking is our legacy.

Brazilian biomedical scientists Karina Fonseca-Azevedo and Suzana Herculano-Houzel note that the largest primates do not have the largest brains, a perplexing question. Encephalization (a larger brain size per body size than you’d expect) has long been thought to be a key feature setting humans apart from other primates, and mammals as a whole, but there is no consensus on how or why this happened.

“We consider this disparity to be a clue that, in primate evolution, developing a very large body and a very large brain have been mutually excluding strategies, probably because of metabolic reasons,” the authors write. They’re the first to try and quantify these limits.

“You would think, ‘Surely people have thought about this stuff before,’” Wrangham said in an interview. “But nobody has ever thought about the fact that cooking gives you more energy.”

This is a central thesis of Wrangham’s 2009 book, “Catching Fire.” He argues that the control of fire allowed early hominids to not only cook their food, but obtain warmth, allowing them to shed body hair and in turn run faster without overheating; to develop calmer personalities, enabling social structures around the hearth; and even to form relationships among men and women–in short, to become human.

“My day job is studying chimpanzees in the wild, and I have often studied feeding behavior. I have tried to survive on what chimps eat,” he said.

Really?

“If I don’t have any food with me, I just eat what they eat. And that told me that what they eat is totally unsatisfying,” he continued. “I thought about what would happen if humans had to live like chimps. And that took me very rapidly to the conclusion, within a few minutes, that as long as we’ve been human, it’s hard to imagine how we could live on raw food.”

Wrangham’s ideas follow the expensive-tissue hypothesis. That concept predicts an inverse relationship between brain size and gut size–to accommodate a large, human-sized brain; our guts shrank relative to our primate cousins. Imagine the potbelly of a gorilla, Wrangham notes. This paper doesn’t even address gut size, just the requirements of our hungry brains.

“In order to be able to apply a sufficient number of calories to the brain, you have to be able to cook your food,” Wrangham said. “You can only afford to have a brain if you can supply a lot of energy to it.”

The idea is that raw food just doesn’t provide enough calories. You have to get out more than you put in, and raw food takes a lot more work (meaning calories) for your muscles and organs to chew and digest, resulting in a net decrease in the amount of calories available for the rest of your cells.

But you can only spend so many hours of the day eating–there must be time to sleep, forage and procreate, too. This limits the amount of calories you can get per day, and it turns out this is directly related to how many neurons you can grow, according to Fonseca-Azevedo and Herculano-Houzel.

The duo crunched numbers to figure out the metabolic costs of a human-sized brain, which is the third most energy-expensive organ in the human body, ranking below only skeletal muscle and the liver in terms of metabolic needs. The more neurons the brain has, the more energy it needs.

If we ate an only-raw diet, to maintain the body size we humans possess, as well as the number of neurons our brains possess, people would have to eat for more than 9 hours per day, they found.

Cooking does some of the work of digestion for us, as Wrangham puts it.

“Molecules are moving faster under the influence of heat; they are breaking up or shaking apart from each other, and that’s essentially what happens in digestion, the denaturating of proteins,” he said. “They lose their structure, and become more accessible.”

As an example, he and others have investigated the effects of cooking on starch molecules and humans’ ability to digest cooked versus raw grains. Simply cooking starchy foods increases the net energy gain by 30 percent, he said.

“The grains themselves represent long chains of glucose, which are very difficult to digest until they have been gelatinized; you are opening up these chains,” he said.

Take, for example, a simple white sauce of flour and butter. You have to stir constantly over even heat, letting the water in the butter invade the starch molecules in the grain. “Then you get this change in consistency, where the whole thing becomes a continuous colloid, and the starch grains have become gelatinized. The result is that it will be easier to digest,” Wrangham said. “Our body pays fewer calories for the digestion.”

Certainly, there are benefits to consuming plenty of raw fruits and vegetables. These foods supply us with high nutrient levels and are generally low in calories too. Eating lots of raw foods is a key feature of an anti-cancer diet style and a long life. But are there advantages to eating a diet of all raw foods and excluding all cooked foods?

The answer is a resounding “No”.

In fact, eating an exclusively raw-food diet is a disadvantage. Excluding all steamed vegetables and vegetable soups from your diet narrows your nutrient diversity and has a tendency to reduce the percentage of calories from vegetables in favor of nuts and fruits which are lower in nutrients per calorie.

Raw vegetables are dramatically low in calories and we probably only absorb about 50 calories a pound from raw vegetables. Our caloric needs cannot be met on a raw food diet without consuming large amounts of fruits, avocado, nuts and seeds.

Unfortunately, sloppy science prevails in the raw-food movement. Raw food advocates mistakenly conclude that since many cooked foods are not healthy for us, then all cooked foods are bad. This is not true.

The idea that stirs the most enthusiasm for this diet is the contention that cooking both destroys about fifty percent of the nutrients in food, and destroys all or most of the life promoting enzymes. It is true that when food is baked at high temperatures—and especially when it is fried or barbecued—toxic compounds are formed and most important nutrients are lost.

Enzymes are proteins that work to speed up or “catalyze” chemical reactions. Every living cell makes enzymes for its own activities. Human cells are no exception. Our glands secrete enzymes into the digestive tract to aid in the digestion of food.

However, after they are ingested, the enzymes contained in plants do not function as enhancements or replacements for human digestive enzymes. These molecules exist to serve the plant’s purpose, not ours. The plant enzymes get digested by our own digestive juices along with the rest of the food and are absorbed and utilized as nutrients.

Contrary to what many raw-food web sites claim, the enzymes contained in the plants we eat do not catalyze chemical reactions that occur in humans. The plant enzymes merely are broken down into simpler molecules by our own powerful digestive juices. Even when the food is consumed raw, plant enzymes do not aid in their own digestion inside the human body. It is not true that eating raw food demands less enzyme production by your body, and dietary enzymes inactivated by cooking have an insignificant effect on your health and your body’s enzymes.

Plant foods do not supply enzymes that aid in their digestion when consumed by animals. Our body supplies exactly the precise amount of enzymes needed for digestion; we are not ill equipped to digest normal food. The plant enzymes are broken down into simpler molecules by our own powerful digestive juices and even those that are absorbed as peptide size pieces (or with some biologic function) do not function to catalyze human functions.

So it is not true that eating raw food demands less enzyme production by your body. A healthy body produces the precise amount of enzymes needed to digest the ingested food appropriately and the enzymes our body uses for other processes are unique to our human needs and are not present in plants. We make what we need from the proper materials.

Recent studies confirm that the body absorbs much more of the beneficial anti-cancer compounds (carotenoids and phytochemicals—especially lutein and lycopene) from cooked vegetables compared with raw. Scientists speculate that the increase in absorption of antioxidants after cooking may be attributed to the destruction of the cell matrix (connective bands) to which the valuable compounds are bound.

In many cases, cooking actually destroys some of the harmful anti-nutrients that bind minerals in the gut and interfere with the utilization of nutrients. Destruction of these anti-nutrients increases absorption. Steaming vegetables and making vegetable soups breaks down cellulose and alters the plants’ cell structures so that fewer of your own enzymes are needed to digest the food, not more. On the other hand, the roasting of nuts and the baking of cereals does reduce availability and absorbability of protein.

Only small amounts of nutrients are lost with conservative cooking like making a soup, but many more nutrients are made more absorbable. These nutrients would have been lost if those vegetables had been consumed raw. When we heat, soften and moisturize the vegetables and beans we dramatically increase the potential digestibility and absorption of many beneficial and nutritious compounds.

Many vitamins are water-soluble, and a significant percent can be lost with cooking, especially overcooking. Similarly, many plant enzymes function as phytochemical nutrients in our body and are useful to maximize health. They, too, can be destroyed by overcooking. However, we cannot paint with this brush of negativity over every form of cooking.

When food is steamed or made into a soup, the temperature is fixed at 100 degrees Celsius or 212 Fahrenheit—the temperature of boiling water. This moisture-based cooking prevents food from browning and forming toxic compounds. Acrylamides, the most generally recognized of the heat-created toxins, are not formed with boiling or steaming. They are formed only with dry cooking. Most essential nutrients in vegetables are made more absorbable after being cooked in a soup and water-soluble nutrients are not lost because we eat the liquid portion of the soup too.

We also increase the plant proteins in the diet, especially important for those eating a plant-based diet with limited or no animal products.

Multiple studies have demonstrated that the beneficial antioxidant activity of cooked tomatoes is significantly higher than from uncooked tomatoes. Scientists speculate that the increase in absorption of antioxidants after cooking may be attributed to the destruction of the cell matrix (connective bands) to which the valuable compounds are bound.

It is true that vitamin C, folate, B vitamins, and certain minerals are water-soluble and can be destroyed by cooking; but vitamin C contributes less than one percent to the total antioxidant activity of fruits and vegetables. For example, the main antioxidant activity in apples is provided by classes of chemicals called phenolics and flavonoids, both of which are made more available by cooking.

If you compare raw broccoli to steamed or frozen broccoli, about 25 percent of the vitamin C and about 20 percent of the selenium is lost during cooking, but the other 20 commonly measured nutrients show only an insignificant change. Raw-food advocates are not accurate when they claim that 50 percent of nutrients are lost with steaming. A closer estimate would be 10 percent.

Cooking corn also has been shown to significantly boost its antioxidant activity, despite reduction in vitamin C. When the ability to quench free radicals was measured, cooked corn outperformed raw corn by between 25 to 50 percent. Cooking corn releases a compound called ferulic acid, which provides anti-cancer health benefits. Ferulic acid, a phytochemical, is unique in that it is found only in very low amounts in fruits and vegetables, but is found in very high amounts in corn. The availability to the body of ferulic acid can be increased 500 to 900 percent by cooking the corn.

In conclusion, eating lots of raw foods is only a feature of a healthy diet. Like most things in life, most who practice the raw food diet did so with blind faith, thinking it was the end all and be all.

This is NOT true.

Live and Learn. We All Do.

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Filed under: Diet, Health and Fitness, Uncategorized, wellness Tagged: Carleton Coon, Cooked vs Raw Food, Digestion, Eating, education, energy, food, Good Health, health, nature, Raw foodism, Richard Wrangham, Ted Talks, Vesanto Melina



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You Can Kill A Man But Not An Idea

What is Hajj?

Hajj in the Arabic language means aim, destination or purpose (qasd). The reason is clear: Hajj is the ultimate journey of loving submission (‘ubūdīyah) and conscious surrender (riq) to Allāh.

Hajj is the fifth pillar of Islam and it is incumbent upon every able Muslim to carry out this journey in order to purify himself for God.

Every year more than two million Muslims, from 70 different countries, travel to Makkah and Medina with the purpose of undertaking the great obligation of Hajj. It is an exemplary example of equality and unity when the pilgrims gather together for Hajj.

Muslims who belong to different nations, cultures, social and economical status are all dressed in two pieces of unsown cloth. All perform the same rites. There is no difference of rich and poor, all stand in front of their Lord in submission and humility.

Hajj provides a unique opportunity for Muslims to meet each other, understand each other, increase in love, get closer, improve and resolve relationships. It is from the blessings of God during Hajj that one is in continuous opportunity to gain good deeds by treating one’s Muslim brethren in the best way. And aid the poor and needy, which is also from the means of achieving great rewards from God.

The Hajj is a journey full of symbolism, for it represents the soul’s journey towards God. Each stage and each aspect of the pilgrimage is replete with profound meanings about life, worship and realities of faith, especially the love and awe of God.

The hajj carries immense symbolic significance, representing the oneness of the Islamic community (the Koran speaks of the umma wahida, the one community of the faith). The ritual that cuts across all sects, with some differences, suggests common bonds that stretch, geographically, from the Middle East to Africa and Asia and into the Muslim minority communities of Europe, the Americas and Australasia; and temporally from now to Judgment Day.

The hajj is also viewed as an affirmation of the equality of all believers. The simple white cloth that pilgrims don, and that some retain to use as a burial shroud, represents humility before God but also negates the hierarchies and inequalities that otherwise seem important in life.

Linguistically, Hajj means, ‘He prepared, or betook himself, to or towards a person… or towards an object of reverence, veneration, respect or honor.” [E.W. Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon (Cambridge, England: The Islamic Text Society, 1984), vol: 1, p. 513]

In the Sharee’ah, Hajj means a specific journey to Makkah during the designated month of Dhul-Hijjah, for the performance of Hajj as an act of worship to God: “The Hajj is (in) the well-known month (i.e. 10th month, 11th month and the first ten days of the 12th month of the Islamic calendar).

Most people do the pilgrimage for religious reasons of one kind or another. For many people, the pilgrimage is done as an act of devotion. For others, it is done to ask for benefits, for themselves or others, living or dead. Still others do it as a quest for enlightenment, or at least what they see as possible progress along that path. All of these are religious ideas.

Whatever their specific reason for doing the pilgrimage, nearly all pilgrims see the pilgrimage as a sacred activity. Many take vows. Many will vow to refrain from anger, alcohol, or sex during the pilgrimage, taking vows to abstain from what they perceive as “worldly activities” that seem to be out of place in the “sacred” realm of the pilgrimage.

‘Pilgrim‘ and ‘pilgrimage’ are words that have carried a range of meanings over the centuries.

Perhaps the most significant pilgrimage that any of us will ever undertake, however, is the spiritual pilgrimage.

The English term ‘pilgrim’ originally comes from the Latin word peregrinus (per, through + ager, field, country, land), which means a foreigner, a stranger, someone on a journey, or a temporary resident.

It can describe a traveler making a brief journey to a particular place or someone settling for a short or long period in a foreign land.

‘Pilgrimage’ is a term, which can be used to portray an inner spiritual journey through prayer, meditation or mystical experience. In some faiths and cultures, withdrawal from the everyday world into a monastery or hermit’s cell, choosing to enter into a physically restricted life of isolation and silence, is seen as a way of setting the soul free to travel inwardly.

The people of the world are usually aware of two kinds of journey.

One journey is that which is made to earn livelihood. The second one is that which is undertaken for pleasure and sightseeing.

In both [of] these journeys, a man is impelled to go abroad by his need and desire. He leaves home for a purpose of his own, he spends money or time for his own requirements, therefore, and no question of sacrifice arises in such a journey.

But the position of this particular journey, which is called Hajj, is quite different from that of other journeys.

This journey is not meant to gain any personal end or any personal desire. It is intended solely for God, and for fulfillment of the duty prescribed by God.

[You] will be unable to appreciate fully the benefits of Hajj unless you keep in view the fact that each and every Muslim does not perform Hajj individually but that only one single period has been fixed for Hajj for the Muslims of the whole world, and, therefore, [hundreds of thousands] of Muslims jointly perform it.

Historically, the Holy Prophet (S.A.W.) performed the Hajj towards the end of his life. It can thus be seen as the conclusion of his mission, or as the conclusion to his life. It can also be interpreted as a summary of one’s life on earth.

On the one hand there is the physical Hajj, which is specific to those who embark on the physical journey towards Makkah. Conversely there is also another level of Hajj, a Hajj that we are all a part of – the “Hajj of Life”. This is our journey through life. In it, there are various stations, challenges, decisions etc. Such is the life on earth.

Meaning that we are to see ourselves as travelers or wayfarers, embarking on a travel. However, wherever we stop our stay is never permanent. Such is our journey in this world, temporary, and not permanent.

The journey inevitably comes to an end, as we must return home. This is our true abode. Our hearts must therefore not be too attached to this world as it is not the end itself, but rather it is the means towards the end.

Journeying to a place of special significance plays a part in almost all cultures and religions. The goal may be a site given prominence by particular events, the shrine of a saint or other significant figure, or a remarkable geographical feature.

The journey of Hajj can be considered as a spiritual and physical healing program or journey, because it touches upon different aspects of the human self.

Every nation and society has a center of unity where they get together to worship God. They see prosperity and culture as relics of unity. People of the society get to know each other and understand each other’s difficulties. They form a unified front to remove these difficulties and achieve their goals.

Unity is vividly observed in the great pillar of Hajj, which is repeated every year and for which millions of Muslims gather from all over the world. They represent the Muslim ummah with all its different races, countries, colors, and languages. They gather in one place, at the same time, wearing the same garment and performing the same rites.

They make one stand in the same monument. They proclaim the oneness of the Lord of the worlds, submit themselves to His law, and show their unity under His banner. They announce to the whole world that they are one nation although they come form different countries and homes. They perform the rites and stand in the open areas of Makkah, where bodies become close to each other, faces meet, hands shake, greetings exchange, tongues communicate, and hearts reconcile. They meet for the same purpose and intention.

Differences in social class, wealth, race, and color vanish within these feelings and rites. A pure and solemn atmosphere of brotherhood, serenity, affection, and love prevails. In a world engulfed in dispute and division, it is a great blessing for a person to have the ability to enjoy this atmosphere of complete peace. In a world where discrepancy is the prevailing system, they (pilgrims) enjoy an atmosphere of equality. In the face of the world’s grudges, hatred, and disputation-feelings all too characteristics of the modern life-pilgrims experience a feeling of love and harmony.

Though the facilities and surrounding s around Mecca and vicinities have altered in modern days, the rites of pilgrimage and the bonds of national and international brotherhood among pilgrims have remained unaltered throughout centuries. This adds to the uniqueness of Hajj.

In this great fusion of the Muslim community, often under utmost intense conditions, all the pilgrims once together will finally get separated and return to their respective homes with hearts filled with light and minds filled with new concepts. The spiritual benefits of Hajj can be clearly estimated when the modern mind returns home utterly transformed.

In Islam there is a wisdom and purpose behind every ritual. Some of these wisdoms we know and some we don’t. The rituals we don’t understand or are unclear to us are a mere test of our obedience to the Omnipotent Lord. It is just like a corporation where a boss might give the worker a task, which he doesn’t understand. This doesn’t mean that the task is not important; there might be many reasons behind assigning such a task, one of which could be test of obedience and loyalty. The boss might want to know the level of obedience of the worker before promoting him to a higher position in the company.

Every action and ritual in Islam has a purpose. If we lose the essence and purpose of a ritual, then it becomes an empty shell with no fruit inside—meaning the benefit of the action is lost. Hajj like any other pillar of Islam has purpose, manners, virtues, values, rewards and benefits.

The Rite of the Wanderer, or the Symbolic Pilgrimage, is entirely puerile and unmeaning, unless we have learned in what ideas it originated, and what its authors intended to represent by it.

This symbolic journey is also emblematical of the pilgrimage of life, which, man soon enough discovers, is often dark and gloomy, surrounded by sorrow, and fear, and doubt. It teaches him that over this dark, perplexed, and fearful course lays the way to a glorious destiny; that through night to light must the earth-pilgrim work his way; that by struggle, and toil, and earnest endeavor, he must advance with courage and hope until, free of every fetter, and in the full light of virtue and knowledge, he stands face to face with the mighty secrets of the universe, and attains that lofty height, whence he can look backward over the night-shrouded and tortuous path in which he had been wandering, and forward to sublime elevation—to more glorious ideals, which seem to say to him, “On, on for ever!”

Such, then, is the grand and inspiring lesson, which this Symbolic Pilgrimage is perpetually repeating to the brethren. Let them study it well, and labor with faith; for it announces a progress in science and virtue, which will reach through eternity.

As long as man continues to live in this world, his soul and body are not separate. Man’s body is a manifestation of his soul and the acts of the body are manifestations of his inner feelings. In the same way that physical acts represent spiritual acts, the physical acts push the soul towards spiritual journey.

The Hajj consists of the Hajj of the Body (walking, standing, collecting and throwing), the Hajj of the Mind (performing the rites with understanding) and the Hajj of the Heart (performed in total submission to The Almighty).

The Ka’bah is not the destination; it is the starting point of one’s commitment to cast away one’s bad ways and to begin afresh a new God-centered life. 

The pilgrim is like a drop of water that has become part of the river that is flowing to its origin, the ocean of Eternity.

In essence, hajj is man’s evolution toward God; his return to Him. It is a symbolic demonstration of the philosophy of creation of Adam, the first man. To further illustrate this, it may be stated that the performance of hajj is a simultaneous show or exhibit of many things.

It is a show of creation. It is a show of history. It is a show of unity. It is a show of Islamic ideology. It is a show of Ummah, the community of Muslims. That is why, it is said in the Quran: “And proclaim unto mankind the hajj. … That they may witness things that are of benefit to them.” (Quran 22:27-8)

Our modern mind is at times so much engaged in the material pursuits of life that we sparingly find time to respond efficiently to the yearning of our soul. The retreat and solace found in Hajj fill this void by procuring a spiritual bliss and peace to our body, mind and soul.

The pilgrimage is daily life. The way you live your life during the pilgrimage becomes the way you live your daily life afterwards. Pilgrim’s lore is full of stories of miracles of reformed sinners, of people who have changed for the good. I’ve never yet heard a story of a pilgrim who became worse after doing the pilgrimage. Of course, some people probably have returned from the pilgrimage unchanged or changed for the worse, but they aren’t part of pilgrimage lore precisely because the pilgrimage is seen as a positive transforming experience. That’s what people expect to happen — change for the better, one way or another.

Progress is one of the basic themes of the pilgrimage. This idea of progress, progress within and of the mind, is central to ideals of the pilgrimage. Whatever your current level of mind, you can progress to the next level.

Though the pilgrimage is cast in terms of sacred activity, the sacred and the secular are so thoroughly blended that the distinction between the two breaks down. This teaches the lesson that there is no essential difference between the two. As a result, the improved person who has finished the pilgrimage goes back to that other everyday life, ready for further progress.

While the Persian mystic Mansur al-Hallaj famously thought that the hajj could be done in one’s own home as an inner journey, other centers have developed throughout the Muslim world. Karbala and Qum for the Shia, Nizamuddin/South Delhi in India and Dewsbury in Yorkshire for the Tablighi Jamaat, and Kaolack in Senegal for the Niassene Tijaniyya Sufis are just a few examples of the many other forms of pilgrimage that exist.

Like the great pilgrimage to Mecca, they assume a spiritual significance beyond the act of travel and, like them, are subject to political and social contestation.

While it obviously constitutes physical movement from one place to another, it is pre-eminently a journey of the mind, projecting believers across space and time, even often in the process overcoming barriers of gender and politics.

The external acts of Hajj symbolize the spiritual stages of the prophets and the Imams. Hajj is a display of the spiritual journey of the devotees and the stages of servitude.

All of these behaviors will lead you to enlightenment. It doesn’t matter whether you do them during the pilgrimage, at work, at school, at home, or when going about your life in town. In fact, what matters is not when or where you live this way. What matters is that you do live this way.

Live and Learn. We All Do.

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Filed under: Islam, Spirituality, Uncategorized Tagged: British Museum Hajj, Cambridge, CNN, consciousness, education, enlightenment, Five Pillars of Islam, Hajj, Hajj of Life, humanity, islam, life, live, love, Makkah, Malcom X, Mecca, muslim, Pilgrim, Pilgrimage, soul, Spiritual, sufi, universal



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The Legacy Of The Armenian Genocide Is Woven Into The Fabric Of America.

Love her or hate her, one thing is undeniable; Kim Kardashian has single handedly introduced the word “Armenian” into pop culture. E! Channel often refers to Kim Kardashian as the Armenian Princess.

Armenian, what’s that?” Yes, it is shocking but true; most people in the United States have had no clue that an entire group of people called Armenians exists.

Armenia, Republic of Armenia, Hayastan, a landlocked republic in southwestern Asia; formerly an Asian soviet; modern Armenia is but a fragment of ancient Armenia which was one of the world’s oldest civilizations.

Throughout 2500 years the Armenian people have been invaded and oppressed by their neighbors. Should a former empire look after former subjects? Especially if they have been relegated to the fringe and are struggling?

Emotionally speaking, one can argue that yes, it should.

Yet common sense says, “Hold on a second.”

If there is one lesson that history has taught us about imperialism, it is that this kind of care always comes at a price.

Take Armenia, for example. It fared well both as an ally of tsarist Russia and subsequently as one of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union.

Both the Russian Empire and the U.S.S.R. are relics of the past, as is Armenia’s well-being.

Some dropped their language and religion to survive after the 1915 genocide, but close to 100 years later, “hidden Armenians” want to take pride in their identity.

The average American child and teen knows more about the Kardashians than the culture. But for some it’s impossible not to read her surname and think of her Armenian heritage. Kardashian is distinctively Armenian. The model’s father, paternal grandparents and paternal great grandparents were all of Armenian descent.

Kim is an 4th generation Armenian and famous in the world, so this is enough for every Armenian to be proud of Kim. But because of cultural and traditional issues, many do not want to accept that she is an Armenian.

Armenia has been around for at least 3,000 years. Armenians have historically inhabited the “Armenian Highlands”, a vast section of mountains and valleys across eastern Anatolia and the Southern Caucasus. It is here that the biblical mountains of Ararat (and today’s eponymous cognac brand) can be found.

Is Armenia Europe’s most disregarded nation?

It’s certainly ignored by the travel media. Armenia’s claim to fame is that it was the first country in the world to officially adopt Christianity – in AD301. The most iconic image of Armenia is Mount Ararat. Ownership of Ararat is just one of several issues that strain relations between Armenia and Turkey.

Armenians have a rich culture and strong biblical ties. Noah’s ark is rumored to have landed in the heart of historical Armenia on Mt. Ararat, yet people still have no clue who the Armenian people are. An estimated one and a half million Armenians died at the bloody hands of Turks in the 1915 Armenian Genocide, yet to this day Armenians fight for recognition of this tragic event.

In the Bronze Age, several states flourished in the area of Greater Armenia, including the Hittite Empire (at the height of its power), Mitanni (South-Western historical Armenia), and Hayasa-Azzi (1600-1200 BC).

Much of the region’s history has since been spent under the dominion of whichever great power was à la mode at the time: Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans, Persians, Russians and Soviets have all come and gone. These empires often fought their wars on Armenian territory, using Armenian soldiers. Despite rarely being politically independent, Armenians have consistently kept their language and their church. Its location on the silk road allowed Armenia to forge a link in the great network of merchant communities that extended from eastern Asia to Venice.

David M. Lang in his “Armenia: Cradle of Civilization” wrote: ““The ancient land of Armenia is situated in the high mountains… Although Mesopotamia with its ancient civilizations of Sumer and Babylon, is usually considered together with Egypt as the main source of civilized life in the modern sense, Armenia too has a claim to rank as one of the cradles of human culture”.

The historical ties between Armenia and Egypt are really close; they are so close that while standing in front of the magnificent Egyptian sculptures made in III-I millennium BC you can feel the time flowing through a petrified silence which weaves the tapestry of the history.

Wealth and peace reigned over the Armenian world, and, in accord with the prophecy, each man can rest under his vine or fig.

The perception of the world as a garden of grapevines is perhaps best illustrated in the relief frieze encircling the Holy Cross Temple on the Island of Aghtamar in Lake Van, which is designed and built in the 10th century by the architect Manvel on the order of King Gagik Artzuni. Manvel covered this frieze with mythic symbolic scenes depicted in the forms of familiear everyday village life with reality and myth thoroughly intermingling in the sculptures to present the Armenian concept of an ideal life taking place in a vineyard when the grapes were ripe.

This symbolic world is organized by an endlessly arching, grape-filled vine, which completely entwines the church , representing the Tree of Life; the vine’s spirit is personified in the form of an old man living in the trunk.

In aspect of the dialogue of civilizations the scientific and cultural spheres are important. And its vivid example is the Golden age (V c.) of the original and translated Armenian literature of V century which played a significant role in the life of many generations of the Armenians, thus enriching the treasury of world culture too.

Characterizing Egypt as a renowned country “which is situated in a beautiful part of the world and abound in various fruits”, Egypt “is surrounded by a miraculous wall of Nile, which not only protects but also feeds it…”.

The father of the Armenian historiography gave high praise to Alexandria: “the city is proportionate… built between sea and an artificial lake”.

Alexandria which passed from the paganism to Christianity made a great impression on Movses Khorenatsi. He wrote: “Now not a five-headed Pluto rules here” but “a preacher of the Gospel Mark and there are no more god-born heroes from the kin of the dragon…there are the chapels of the saints…

Over the centuries Armenians maintained close and direct contacts with the Greek culture, by which they were deeply influenced. During the so-called ‘Dark Ages’ of Byzantium’s intellectual life, Armenia played an important role in the preservation of Greek cultural heritage, as much as the neighbouring Syriac speaking world, in particular for the transmission of Greek philosophical scholarship. The old centres of translations of Late Antique Armenia as well as the scriptoria and the libraries attached to the monastic schools of medieval Armenia contributed considerably to the reception and dissemination of the Greek scientific texts.

Like the Jewish people, the Armenians were another community that has suffered genocide in horrendous proportions. While The Jews suffered at the hands of the Nazis, the Armenians suffered at the hands of the Ottomans.

In contrast to it some “research centers” are engaged in falsifying and misrepresenting of the Armenian history as well as in the anti-Armenian propaganda in the information war. E.g. “Institute for Armenian Researches”, which deals with dissemination of the hostile information about Armenia and the Armenian people by denying the Armenian Genocide and falsifying and distorting the Armenian Question, was established in Turkey on the order of the authorities.

The anti-Armenian purposes of the “institute” had already been mentioned: “”In order to institutionalize this campaign of denial and try to invest it with an aura of legitimacy, a “think-tank” was established in Ankara in April 2001. Operating under the name “Institute for Armenian Research” as a subsidiary of The Center For Eurasian Studies, with a staff of nine, this new outfit is now proactively engaged in contesting all claims of genocide by organizing a series of conferences, lectures, and interviews, and above all, through the medium of publications, including a quarterly”4”.

In this sense we speak about true Armenology.

Armenology (“studying of the materials about the Armenian reality… as a theory about academic knowledge revealed in various fields, and peculiarities characteristic to Armenian reality, researched by appropriate disciplines with their own distinctive methods”)1, by its potential, for the creator and preserver of the spiritual and cultural values – the Armenian people, is the mentality constituting system.

The protection of the spiritual, academic and ideological spheres of the Armenian people (the Republic of Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (Artsakh), Javakhq and the Armenian Diaspora) in the information field is implemented on the academic grounds with the help of the true Armenology which has accumulated millennia experience and which nourishes the national ideology.

In this aspect, in the spheres of information and psychological security the importance is attached to the defense from external and internal distortions as well as “dissemination of ideological concepts on the external information field in the context of national interests” .

One of the results of the official visit of the president of the Republic of Armenia to the Arab Republic of Egypt in April 2007 was the opening of the Center for the Armenian Studies at the Department of Philology at the University of Cairo on the decision of the government of Egypt on December 13, which is at the center of the attention of the Embassy of the RA and Armenian community. The foundation of the Center for the Armenian Studies in Egypt is remarkable from the point of view of historic ties with Armenia.

The majestic pyramids bearing the impress of eternity reminds of ancient Egypt.

There is a saying: “Man is afraid of time and the time is afraid of pyramids”. These man-made monuments seem to be a symbol of eternal antagonism of life and death.

According to the definition of Anania Shirakatsi “origin is the beginning of the destruction and destruction, in its turn, is the beginning of the origin. And due to this indestructible confrontation the world acquires eternal character”.

Since the opening of the Armenian embassy in Egypt close relations has been established with the Armenian community. Its best manifestation is the building where the embassy is placed – on the isle of Zamalek in the middle of the Nile. It was granted by the AGBU branch and repaired by the efforts of the Armenian community.

Under the patronage of the Embassy of the RA and the head of the Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church His Grace Bishop Ahot Mnatsakanyan I delivered a lecture to the Armenian community in Egypt on “Armenia in the ancient and medieval cartography and civilizational contribution of Armenia to the development of the “Silk Road” and “Significance of the elucidation of the history of the ancient Armenia in the aspect of the spiritual and cultural protection of the Armenian people and patriotic education of the youth” (Pltakian Hall in Cairo and the National Diocesan Residence in Alexandria).

Armenian studies are a bridge, connecting the white summits of Ararat-Masis mount and peaks Egyptian pyramids…

Armenians always played a major role in the life of Egypt. Armenian-born Nubar Pasha Nubarian became the first PM and foreign minister of Egypt, with streets in Cairo and Alexandria named after the politician who garnered numerous titles and awards during his lifetime. His son Boghos Nubar Pasha founded the Armenian Great Benevolent Union (AGBU) in 1906. Before Gamal Abdel Nasser’s presidency in 1952, 60000 Armenians lived in Cairo and about 30000 in Alexandria.

“Egyptologists have hinted the Egyptian fascination with the pyramid to this belief. The Egyptians had since ancient times developed close connections with the people of Ararat. The great pharaohs often married into the noble and royal families of ancient Armenian kingdom of Mittani, Queen Nefertiti being one of the most notable representatives of Mitanni princesses on the Egyptian throne.

Their friendship and cooperation with the Kingdom of Mittani and intimate connections stretched from the Kingdom’s period into the Hyksos and Hurrian dynasties (XVI th dynasty) in Egypt from the Armenian Highland.

“Beautiful Has Come”…

Queen Nefertiti of Egypt was a native of Mitanni. The Mittani Kingdom of Armenia was an off-shoot of the Hurrian kingdom. The Hurri (a member of a people, originally from Armenia, who settled in northern Mesopotamia and Syria during the 3rd-2nd millennium bc and were later aborbed by the Hittites and Assyrians. (See also Mitanni.) Hittite & Assyrian Harri, Hurri), and the Mittani peoples were the contemporaries the Hittites and the Hykos, within whom they shared many cultural and political aspects.

Today, all these aforementioned nations are considered to be, in varying degrees, proto-Armenians; that is we modern day Armenians are direct descendants of the remnants of those ancient tribes. Moreover, Solomon’s wife was a Hittite and King David purchased Jerusalem from Hurrians. Hittites, Hyksos, Hurrians, Mittani and Urartu had an immense impact upon the ancient world for centuries.

Nefertiti (14th century BC) was the wife of King Amenhotep IV the intellectual Egyptian ruler of Egypt (reigned about 1379-1362 BC).

She bore him six daughters but no son. His reign was distinguished by a religious revolution, strongly supported by Nefertiti, that renounced the established pantheon of gods in favor of a single, supreme deity, Aton. Aton, represented by a sun disc, was revered as the source of life and the bounties of nature.

A girl from Armenia whose beauty is only exceeded by her virtue and kindness of heart. Where else can you find features like this but Hayastani , which is the original crossroad between Western Asia and Eastern Europe.

It is suggest that Nefertiti was in fact the Tadukhipa, the daughter of Tushratta (also known as Dasharatha) King of the Mitanni, but most scholars consider it more likely that Tadukhipa was actually Queen Kiya.

Her name was Tadukhipa which is now pronounced as Taguhi.

She was so beautiful that Egyptians called her Nefertiti which in their language means “Beautiful Has Come”.

Native sources on the religion of the Hurrians of the Mitanni kingdom are limited; about their mythology, however, much is known from related Hittite and Ugaritic myths. Like the other peoples of the ancient Middle East.

Because only a few Mitanni settlements have been unearthed in Mesopotamia, knowledge of Mitanni arts and culture is as yet insufficient.

There is no question that a human tragedy is unfolding in Egypt and becoming more critical with each passing day. While no one can remain indifferent to the killing and maiming of civilians, the Prime Minister of Turkey is the last person on earth who should be taking such a self-righteous attitude. Anyone who has blood on his hands has no right to demonize others.

Curiously, after Pres. Morsi’s unceremonious departure from power, a series of articles appeared in scores of Egyptian newspapers, detailing the history of the Armenian Genocide, demanding that Turkey pay restitution to the survivors, and calling on Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister , to acknowledge his country’s criminal past.

To top it all, a surprising twitter message was posted on August 17 by Adly Mansour, Egypt’s Interim President, announcing that his country’s “UN representative tomorrow will sign the international document recognizing the Armenian massacres which were committed by the Turkish army, causing the deaths of one million people.”

Understandably, most Armenians would be displeased that the victimization of their ancestors is being exploited in a political tug of war between the two countries. Yet, unfortunately, this is politics as usual. If Egypt’s new leaders find it expedient to recognize the Armenian Genocide, this would be a welcome change. It is better to recognize the Genocide, regardless of political motives, than not to recognize it for all the wrong reasons!

After all, no one can expect the Egyptian government to take a position on an issue, if it is contrary to its own national interests. In this regard, Egypt is no different from other countries, including the United States and Israel, which periodically dangle acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide as a Damoclean Sword over the heads of Turkish leaders.

The final decision on the recognition of the Armenian Genocide depends on whatever concessions Cairo is expecting from Ankara. If Egypt, the most populous Arab state, recognizes the Armenian Genocide, that would deal a devastating blow to the Turkish government’s frantic efforts to counter the worldwide commemorations of the Genocide Centennial in 2015.

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A Story About Science, Knowledge, Democracy and Freedom Of Choice

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Soccer is Life; Love is Basketball

It continues to be one of sport’s most unlikely spectacles — Dennis Rodman, American ambassador. Yet on Sunday, there he was on national television, acting as an unofficial spokesman for stronger ties between the United States and North Korea.

Sport is a major part of modern life and, driven by an Akira-style media, is worldwide in its audience.

Sporting events like the Olympics, the World Cup, the European Championship, the Africa Cup of Nations, and the Super Bowl are some of the most-watched events across the world.

Last week, ex-NBA player Dennis Rodman (nicknamed “The Worm”) and several members of the Harlem Globetrotters went to North Korea to meet Kim Jong Un and participate in basketball exhibition events as part of a VICE documentary that will air on HBO.

In many ways, the experience played out like your typical buddy comedy. Guy plays basketball, guy has facial piercings and attends a book promotion wearing a wedding dress, guy claims he’s going to marry himself.

Then said guy travels to a secretive, totalitarian country where nuclear weapons have been tested to meet and talk about the Chicago Bulls with said country’s leader, a man we know little about, but whose father once allegedly shot 11 holes in one during a round of golf and claimed he could control weather with his mind.

“To succeed in sports requires practice, discipline and determination; important skills that help young people succeed in all areas of their lives.”

The “nonsense” promulgated by the north in relation to events surrounding the birth of Kim Jong-il, of double rainbows magically appearing at the moment of his birth, and army generals speaking after his funeral of snow falling like rain weeping for the loss of the “Dear Leader,” is all mysticism, to some devoid of any rational or scientific content, and has nothing to do with a materialist understanding of the world around us, and nothing to do with socialism.

It has more to do with the legacy of Confucianism, Buddhism and mysticism and how such ideas have shaped the people of Korea and many other peoples—not just in the east.

Korea, north and south, is shaped by the “Cold War” tensions between the west and the Soviet Union and those between the Soviet Union and a China dominated, as it was then, by Maoist ideology, coupled with the tensions that still bubble to the surface between the two Korean states themselves.

The partition of Korea was itself the product of the Cold War, which in Korea turned into a very hot war of savage proportions. Hundreds of thousands died on both sides. Most cities and towns in the north were flattened by the saturation bombing of the United States and its allies.

As in all peasant societies, religion has played and no doubt still plays a role in people’s lives, shaping how they see and understand things. To western eyes, much of what we see and understand about the east is influenced by how little we know and understand of eastern religions and cultures.

But, here’s a riddle that seems to have escaped the notice of United States policymakers as anxious to preserve “stability” in Egypt as they are on the Korean Peninsula.

If the enemy of your enemy is your friend, then how come Washington’s long favorite friend in the Arab world, Egypt, is so cozy with one of Washington’s bitterest enemies, North Korea?

And if your friend is providing a base of operations for sales of missiles and other stuff to all your foes in the Middle East, then how come your friend is your friend?

All of which points to this puzzle: Why has the United States, since Jimmy Carter as US president engineered the Camp David accords in 1978 and the Egypt-Israel peace treaty the next year, showered billions of dollars in aid on North Korea while Egypt was double-dealing in North Korean missiles, technology and advice?

The answer seems to be that American politicos and envoys, in a long-running saga of supreme diplomatic casuistry, incompetence and all that, preferred to downplay if not ignore Egypt’s ever-tightening ties to North Korea in the overriding interests of guaranteeing a shaky peace in the Middle East.

For two years the United States, South Korea and Japan have intermittently talked of an all-or-nothing deal with North Korea on the nuclear standoff, which President Lee Myung Bak has called a “Grand Bargain.” Egypt’s peace overtures to Israel in the late 1970s are the role model for such a bargain.

The allies currently facing North Korea also struggle to coordinate priorities. South Korea faces a security and existential threat from its northern neighbor. Japan demands resolution to the abduction issue and the threat posed by North Korea’s missile program. The United States is concerned above all else with trying to defend the NPT and a shaky global non-proliferation regime.

Without the potential for an Egyptian style uprising or Grand Bargain for Korea, and heeding the need to prevent war, the only viable option left is an incremental, trust-building approach. This will ultimately be a long and difficult task, demanding both bilateral and multilateral efforts to address the range of concerns of all the major actors. If the dynamic of perpetual conflict on the Korean peninsula is ever to be changed, however, there is no alternative.

Few things are as widely followed, understood and propagated on a mass scale as modern sports are, argues “Gaming the World: How Sports Are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture,” authors Andrei Markovits and Lars Rensmann. While the rules, sanctions, size of field, numbers of players etc., may differ from one sport to another, they are the same in every country.

From New York to London, Nairobi to Tehran, Beijing to Buenos Aires, a goal is a goal, a touchdown a touchdown, and the meaning of a red card or the losing of a wicket, can all be universally understood.

Sport is a language everyone of us can speak,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said, and its power as a tool in a country’s public diplomacy arsenal is being increasingly recognized. Mixing sport and diplomacy can help meet various foreign policy objectives: to bring about regime change, open the door for dialogue when it is closed to politics and to arouse a sense of national pride. This mixture however, is by no means “new.”

Do the benefits outweigh the dangers in mixing diplomacy and sport?’

Much like the Internet, sport diplomacy can be used both as a force for “good” as well as for “bad”. It can incite positive change and open the door for dialogue but at the same time it can reaffirm boundaries and identities, further solidifying divisions.

The beauty of sport is only given relevance by its ugliness – in the case of the Munich Games, the fact that they went ahead, despite such tragic beginnings. This timeless dualism is the reality of sport. Terrorism, war and violence are manifest in sport. Sport is more closely associated – in the sports fans mind, at least – with competition, winning, war, violence, than it is with the business of peace.

But the institutes of sport and diplomacy are universal in scope and nature, and working in tandem can spread positive sporting values such as mutual respect, discipline, tolerance and compassion among acrimonious political relationships.

“Sports can be a powerful medium to reach out and build relationships…across cultural and ethnic divides, with a positive message of shared values: values such as mutual respect, tolerance, compassion, discipline, equality of opportunity and the rule of law. In many ways, sports can be a more effective foreign policy resource than the carrot or the stick.”

Only certain cultures or segments of society show strong interest in speaking English, travelling to the United States, attending a classical music event, or participating in a discussion on human rights. On the other hand, virtually all cultures and all citizens have an interest in and appreciation for sport.

This makes it one of the best methods for exchange – especially for diplomats operating in an age when the opinions of foreign publics are so crucial for success.

Sports-diplomacy can be a ‘soft’ way of exploring or signaling a foreign policy shift between estranged states. The best example of this is, of course, the 1971 case of Ping-Pong Diplomacy, however a more recent example involves the cricket-

life and culture. Americans learn about foreign cultures and the challenges young people from overseas face today.

When you think of diplomats and foreign policy specialists, you probably envision people in suits and ties, carrying attache cases, clustered in meeting rooms with interpreters rapidly talking between them. But an integral part of the U.S. State Department’s mission is carried out by envoys in shorts, T-shirts, and cross-trainers with nary a briefcase or file folder in site.

Publics the world over seem exhausted after the extraordinary amount of violence of the twentieth century. These publics are more likely to be engaged by soft power overtures from nations, such as cultural or sporting exchanges. In the post-modern information age, sport, culture and diplomacy are no longer niche or backwater institutions but powerful foreign policy tools.

Expressions of hard power through diplomacy based on traditional, high politics of arms treaties, border demarcation or alliances (while still important, obviously) does not hold the same amount of attention among the public as they used to.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has said, “Actually, our sport’s exchanges are the most popular exchanges we do. And when I go to other countries around the world and we talk about what kind of exchanges that people are looking for, very often a leader will say, how about a sports exchange?”

According to Rodman’s agent, Dennis saw the trip as a “chance to speak directly to Kim Jong (Un) that the only way to go is with peace, not war.” While the means for securing harmony – a wild ex-NBA star playing and talking about basketball – is unusual, maybe it represents the type of off-the-wall, creative diplomacy America is going to have to engage in to make sure North Korea doesn’t attempt to give us “death by merciless strikes,” which is what a North Korean media editorial stated in an announcement during Rodman’s visit.

Along with football, basketball is enormously popular in North Korea, where it is not uncommon to see basketball hoops in hotel car parks or in school playgrounds.

North Koreans have limited exposure to US pop culture but Michael Jordan, a former teammate of Rodman when they both played for the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s, is well known.

During a historic visit to North Korea in 2000, the then secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, presented Kim Jong-il, an NBA fan, with a basketball signed by Jordan that later went on display in the huge cave at Mount Myohyang that holds gifts to the leaders.

Thursday’s exhibition game with two Americans playing on each team alongside North Koreans ended in a 110-110 tie. Following the game, Kim threw an “epic feast” for the group, making round after round of toasts.

The Arirang “Mass Games” are a stunning spectacle of choreography and synchronicity involving 100,000 dancers tumbling and leaping in unison while students use placards to create a huge, cascading wall of images as a backdrop.

“He’s a good guy to me,” Rodman said. “As a person to person, he’s my friend. I don’t condone what he does.”

There are many questions thrown up by developments within the DPRK that we must continue to try to understand and attempt to explain. The family dynasty of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un should be understood as representing continuity and a united front in response to the continued two-pronged approach of the United States in applying economic sanctions and military pressures.

The partition of Korea by the United States has left a deep mark on the Korean people, north and south—in the south creating a society that suffered decades of repression and in the north an atmosphere of a society under siege.

The continued interference by the United States and Japan will not bring peace, unity or stability to the people of Korea. It is up to the Korean people, north and south, to solve their differences and to unite if they desire to. This can be done only with the removal of all foreign forces and nuclear weapons from the south.

The Korean people, north and south, need the support and solidarity of progressive opinion to end the partition and control by the United States and to allow them to decide for themselves the future direction of their country.

With the power to unite, awaken hope and inspire change, the mixture of sport and diplomacy is certainly an area we will be seeing more of in the future. We just have to keep in mind that sport diplomacy should in no way be seen as a quick-fix measure.

When sport is mixed in with other facets of diplomacy and concrete foreign policy changes, perhaps the positive vision articulated by Nelson Mandela can be further actualized.

However, based on the negative backlash caused by Rodman’s visit, it seems pretty certain President Obama will not be taking credit for the diplomatic mission in the future, even if the U.S. and North Korea build a friendly relationship and the Raptors leave Toronto and become the Pyongyang Kim Jong Uns.

But, in my opionion, maybe sending someone like Dennis Rodman to meet with the leaders of North Korea is a good thing.

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