Quiz 4

Quiz 4 

1) Umut Uras. “Turkey turning Hagia Sophia back into mosque divides social media.” Al Jazeera. July 11, 2020

The Al Jazeera article is about the reversion of Hagia Sophia.from a museum to a mosque. Hagia Sophia was built as a cathedral during the Byzantine Empire. After the Islamic conquest, it was converted into a mosque. After World War I, Kemal Ataturk became the ruler of Turkey. Ataturk was a secular modernizer, and in 1934 he converted the mosque nto a museum. Customary Islamic rules, such as wearing traditional clothing for men and covering one's hair or face for women, were put aside.

Over the last 10 years, President Erdogan, who was elected as leader of Turkey as the head of an Islamic party, the secular nature of society and the government has been returning toward more traditional Islamic ways. In the recent court case, the court ruled that the deed to the site of Hagia Sophia was as a mosque. Erdogan used this ruling to change the museum back to a mosque.

Outside of Europe and the Americas, we have seen countries making religion more of a part of their government, not just in the Islamic world. In India, for example, the government is becoming more of a Hindu nationalist government than a secular democratic government. Important mosques have been destroyed, and Moslem citizens have a possibility of losing their citizenship per recent laws passed by the nationalist Hindu party that is now in power.

Throughout history, religious buildings have had their usage changed with various conquests. The Parthenon in Rome was a polytheist temple, then a Catholic church, and now more of a museum. The Temple Mount in Jerusalem was allegedly the site of the ancient Jewish Temple and is now the site of Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. There is great friction between Jewish extremists and traditional Moslems over the demand by some religious Jews to destroy the Moslem holy sites and build a third temple on the site.

Obviously, people have different points of view on Hagia Sophia's conversion back to a mosque.


2) Anne Mawathe. “Coronavirus: Why Africans should take part in vaccine trials.” BBC. May 18, 2020

This article looks at the question of doing coronavirus vaccine trials in Africa. On the one hand, Africans are leery about being used as "guinea pigs." They remember a drug trial in Nigeria where children died or were left disabled by the experimental drug. There is a question as to whether there was any informed consent by the participants or their parents. Africans are well aware that as an economically and politically disempowered continent, they could be abused. In addition, if a vaccine is developed, partly on the basis of Africans' participation in trials, what is the likelihood that the majority of Africans would be able to afford the vaccine?

And statements by a French scientist that Africans should participate in trials because of their woefully inadequate healthcare systems comes across as racist and a slap in the face. They remember in the recent past that the one country in Africa with guaranteed free healthcare for all was destroyed by the US and former imperial powers.

On the other hand, it is also true that Africa should participate, as not all populations may respond to a vaccine in the same way. If it is only tested in Europe and North America, we won't find this out until the vaccine is approved and used. Also, there are more safeguards for human volunteers in many African countries now.

Years ago, Larry Summers, the Harvard economist, wrote a paper for an international financial organization that suggested that since Africa was "under polluted," the developed world's environmental waste should be dumped in Africa. Africa was ravaged over the past 500 years by the slave trade, colonialism, and the neoliberal economic model. This has a lot to do with the underdevelopment of Africa and its poverty, even as it is rich in resources. I can understand the concern and mistrust of Africans on coronavirus vaccine trials on that continent.

3) Ganesh Chakravarthi. “Is it Time to Embrace the Anthropocene? The Anthropocene requires that humanity take responsibility for preserving the earth and its species.” The Diplomat. February 11, 2020.

This article is about the next epoch in the earth's natural history, named the Anthropocene. It is so named due to the increasing effects that human actions are having on the environment and natural world. The fear is that human actions could lead in a relatively short period of time to the destruction of the ability of our planet to support not only continued human life on earth, but all life.

In this regard, I was taken by the effect of human life on earth mentioned in our textbook. As early as around several thousand years ago in the fertile crescent, the use of irrigation in agriculture eventually caused salination and the loss of fertility of the soil in that region. Deforestation was a problem in the distant past, too, although not to the extent that it is a problem today. There are fears that the acceleration of the deforestation of the Amazon under the current Brazilian government could have a large and deleterious effect on climate change in the whole world. Unless we take action, the outlook for future generations may well be bleak.