Category Archives: Random

Disfiguring AUB with Zaha Hadid’s Building

Zaha Hadid AUB

Towards the end of my AUB days, someone decided to close down the area that held an infirmary in order for some new construction to take place.

I am not unfamiliar with construction projects at AUB which filled my time when I was there: both the Olayan School of Business and the Hostler student center opened when I was a student. I’m no expert nor do I know anything about architecture but they never struck me as disembodied elements of AUB’s campus.

The building depicted in the above picture is what’s standing in place of the infirmary today. Is it hideous? You bet. Is it an atrocity? Definitely. Does it take away from the charm of AUB’s upper campus? Well, it is a concrete block with holes in it. Again, unprofessional opinion here.

Why is such an ugly building overshadowing Nicely Hall? Because it has Zaha Hadid affixed to it, the world’s most famous architect, who “won” the competition to build this. As if the pull of her name alone isn’t enough to sway the competition.

I have to ask – and it’s obviously too late now for such a question – but didn’t anyone from AUB’s administration get a tinge of nausea as they passed by this growing structure and saw it disfiguring the campus many of them call home? And isn’t the mere presence of such a building disrespectful to the architecture faculty at AUB which is more than capable of coming up with better and more campus-relevant buildings?

But I guess this is how things roll around the country: go with the flashiest, most expensive, most prominent names because that’s sure to be better. Issam Fares- no relation-, after whom this building is named, should probably sue them for libel.

The Myth of All Terrorists Are Muslim

Bad luck Muslims: they drew a deep sigh of relief when the Boston bombings turned out not to be done by a Saudi citizen… it turns out they were European Muslims who, ironically, are literally Caucasian. I guess racial profiling is out the question now?

I didn’t know that a simple comment on a BuzzFeed article from yours truly would spark a debate of over 50 comments and a hundred “likes.” The article in question was simply about the Islam leaning-Youtube page of one of the bombers. My comment was: how is this relevant?

Many sided with me. Many called me overly politically correct. Many others said that even though not all Muslims are terrorists, all the terrorists are Muslims.

If you ponder on that last statement, you are sure led to believe it’s true: the Boston Bombings, 9/11, etc…. However, it turned out to be the furthest thing possible from the truth.

There’s a hypocrisy when it comes to the categorization of “terrorism” in American media. For instance, the Aurora and Newton shootings were not carried out by a “terrorist” but by someone who was mentally unfit. If in a hypothetical scenario that person worshipped Allah instead of God, the “terrorist” label would have been used. Labels tend to stick.

The American and international media have been doing a “fantastic” job at highlighting select bits of acts of human violence and throwing them as representative of an entire sociological or religious aspect. Their portrayal of any violence that happens to come from Muslims tends to be sensationalized à la Middle Eastern way of reporting and, since their extent of knowledge regarding Islam and Muslims is very limited, it also comes off as ignorant. But not to those who take that media as scripture.

Moreover, the numbers to back up the “all terrorists are Muslim” claim is simply not there.

A study published by the FBI – could you get a better US-centric reference? – about the acts  of “terror” on US soil from 1980 till 2005 revealed approximately 318 terrorist attacks that varied in magnitude which break down in the following way:

Terrorism by event USA 1980-2005

Luckily enough, the numbers and data in that study have been turned into a pie-chart (here) that categorizes all the terrorist attacks by religion/ethnicity/background:

Terrorism Islam USASure, many things happened since 2005. But not all of those things were from Muslims. The above percentages may have fluctuated slightly but they’re still representative. For instance, Jewish extremism has over a period of 25 years committed more acts of terror in the United States than Muslims had. Now isn’t that interesting? Did any American know about this or is it hail-Israel and bomb-the-Muslims all the way?

To back this up even further, CNN published a study about the threat of Muslim-American terrorism. The study was done by Duke University and the University of Chapel Hill and found that the supposed danger of the radicalizing of Muslim-Americans post 9/11 has been severely exaggerated. The level is “small compared to other violent crime in America, but not insignificant.”

Violence Begets Violence:

The more societies across the world shut out, categorize and work against people just because they wear a headscarf or pray in a different way, the more these people will find refuge in doctrines that may not represent their true beliefs. The actively-fueled verbal, moral or even social violence only serves to increase the physical violence of those on the other side of the equation. There could be a linear relation there. Sure, the aforementioned premise is an over-simplification but talking about Saudi or Qatari policies of exporting radical Islam coupled with American policies in the region which help fuel this export will take forever.

Is there a growing trend of radicalizing in Islam? I only need to look at samples across my country to say the answer is yes. But fighting this growing radicalization doesn’t happen by clumping those who haven’t fallen prey to erroneous indoctrination with those who have anti-American, anti-West or anti-non-Islam agendas.

The whole point is: political correctness is perhaps something that we need in a time when it’s very easy to judge and lump people in a batch of stereotypes just because we think we know everything there is to know about them, especially when said-political correctness isn’t really coming from a higher moral ground as much as it’s emanating from actual reality.

Empathy isn’t a one-way street. Those terrorist Muslims are the ones dying in the tens and hundreds daily across the world today and it’s not only because they’re fighting among each other.

So next time someone wants to “kill all the Muslims,” know this: not all Muslims are terrorists and it’s a certainty that not all the terrorists are Muslims – not even half of them.

PS: A note from all those big bad Muslims to the people of Boston:

Boston Bombings Syria

Thoughts on Beirut’s Social Media Awards

Before the award ceremony is held next week and this gets considered as a post by one of those bad sports who didn’t like not winning, I figured I’d pitch in on the current “it” thing on Lebanon’s social media scene.

First things first, I believe I have to commend the organizers for their work. They’ve been withstanding the barrage of not-constructive negativity well and devoting their time for this – free of charge.

Now, since I cannot, for the life of me, be absolutely gushing about anything, I feel like I have to give a few remarks which I hope are taken into consideration for the awards’ next iteration:

The nominations:

The nomination process was all over the place. I personally didn’t nominate myself nor anyone else for that matter. But I believe that, since databases in all of the awards’ major categories are present, perhaps it would have been better if the judging panel relied on those and narrowed down the nominees instead. Moreover, does the fact that someone randomly nominated a blog or an institution to a category mean the nominee is particularly representative of said-category?

As an example: is the most engaging tweep category truly representative of Lebanon’s most engaging tweeps? Doesn’t it lack some names such as @TawaNicolas, @MarkInHd, @TKHaddad or @Shadonium?

The categories:

Some of the categories are either too broad or too ambiguous. For instance, my blog is nominated for “best news blog” along with several others, one being Naharnet which later pulled out of the competition to allow bloggers to compete among themselves. I personally think Naharnet should be the only one in this category because they are the only one really providing news. But they’re not a blog. And I don’t think we are really providing “news.” So which is it?

Another example that comes to mind is the best NGO/community category which has Lebanese Memes campaigning against several NGOs such as Donner Sang Compter and Foodblessed. Is it really fair for NGOs who are actively trying to save lives or change the way people think to compete with one of Lebanon’s most popular Facebook pages?

In a recent interview, Aline Chirinian – a member of the Online Collaborative running the awards – said that the NGO/Community category is the most voted on particularly because of Lebanese Memes. I personally find it nonsensical for them to win just because the category was made to include them. And Lebanese Memes are obviously winning.

The Formula:

The 50% judges/50% voting formula is fair. But it would have been better if we didn’t know how nominees stood among the judges. When the voting began, SMABeirut’s twitter account tweeted that nominees were listed in the descending order of judges’ points. If those that are not listed first were to have any “decent” shot at winning, they’d have to get a huge number of votes and I’m not sure how feasible that is with the judges re-voting on the categories later on. Revealing how the judges voted very early in the competition takes away from the competitive spirit.

I’ll take my case as an example. I’m fifth in the blog of the year category and last in the best news category. I’m not optimistic to the point of foolishness about my prospects and it’s more than okay. I’m having fun with the campaign more than anything else. After all, how many times does the Pope endorse someone? However, it would have been more interesting for me if I didn’t know that the judges prefer four other blogs over mine as the year’s best blogs.

Potential Winner Bias:

When members of the jury were announced, it was also made public that those members won’t be in for the running for any potential award. This affected Lebanese politician Nicolas Sehanoui who is, without a doubt, Lebanon’s most active politician on Twitter. However, as I was voting, I couldn’t help but notice that other categories also had some bias to some candidates which are involved in the organization of the Social Media Awards. As an example: Phoenicia Hotel is hosting the award ceremony and they are up for an award – conveniently first in their category as well. Another example: Alfa is both a sponsor and up for several categories.

Judging Panel Bias:

A question that can’t but be asked about the judging panel is the following: can they leave their own personal preference aside and judge a medium in which they are personally interacting with most of the nominated candidates and are on better terms with some than others?

Final Thoughts:

I applaud you if you’re still reading till this point. Many have been telling me how these awards may not be very useful and that their purpose is misguided, spamming timelines in the process. Well, I think this whole thing is just for fun and better have our timelines spammed with this than with posts about the weather, no?

And in case you still haven’t voted for this blog (what are you waiting for, seriously?), please do.

Kill All The Muslims

My sympathy goes to all the victims of yesterday’s Boston Marathon bombing and to all the people who died cross the world in various other bombings in Iraq, Syria, etc… yesterday as well.

I could go on and on about how such acts are those of cowardice but what good would my words do to a country struck by tragedy and to the grieving parents of the people that died yesterday?

However, is it acceptable for the mantra “innocent until proven guilty” to become “an Arab Muslim until proven otherwise” when it comes to any terrorist act taking place anywhere in the world?

Case in point: the following tweets from an American pundit. Do you want to kill all the Muslims too?

20130416-113303.jpg

Is this even allowed in the case when the bomber turns out to be, in fact, an Arab Muslim?

He later on said that this was “sarcasm.” Though I think his “sarcasm” got lost with bashing the “Islam apologetics.”

Excellent Lebanese Customer Service: Roadster Diner

The amount of professionalism at Roadster Diner keeps blowing me away. It could be because we’re not used to such levels of courtesy with customers in Lebanon.

During lent last year, the only and last time I decided to go all Bible belt-Christian and gave up 95% of types of food that man can eat, I ordered some form of a modified crab sandwich-turned vegan from Roadster. There was something wrong with the sauce. So I let them know via a DM on Twitter – I didn’t mind but I felt like they should know to prevent such a thing from occurring with other customers.

A day later, I was contacted by their HQ and discussed the matter for 40 minutes. Discussing sauce for slightly less than an hour can be refreshing.  They requested my address and sent me a package including a free dinner voucher.

Over the past few months, my visits to Rd less and less frequent. You can blame my diet for that, being way up North (they should consider opening something north of Jounieh, something I’ve said before) and medical school for that.

However, a few days ago I decided to indulge in a guilt-full burger as a way to celebrate a weight-related milestone I had crossed. First time in a long time I’m under 100kg!

I ended up finding the tiniest hair possible in my fries, something that is not unusual at restaurants. I am not the type to throw a fit when I see such a thing – there are much worse things that could take place with your food – but I always point it out. So I quietly called over a waiter and did so. He exchanged the fries and I figured that was it, as it should have been.

When we asked for the bill, I was surprised to find a lazy cake being placed on my table and the bill excluding my burger. I complained about this but they were adamant. And this happens every single time something like that happens.

This isn’t a rare occurrence that only happens with me. A friend of mine was having lunch once with a group of friends. He ordered some chicken tenders which came in late and were in less than optimal condition. He pointed it out. The entire table’s bill was on the house. The examples don’t stop there.

For many, such practices should come as second nature to businesses. But the fact of the matter is what Roadster and some very few select companies across the company do is not only rare, it’s borderline unique.

No, I’m not getting paid to write this. I am not a business guru or savant. My extent of business knowledge is the stock app on my iPhone. But as a customer, I believe that the practices of Roadster diner, as an example, make me feel like more than a number with some monetary input associated with it. If anything what Roadster and some other companies do is anything but what we’ve come to associate with typical Lebanese business behavior. And for that, they should be applauded.