Persepsi tentang Islam akan Berubah oleh Empat Hal - JIL Edisi IndonesiaPersepsi media massa Amerika tentang Islam juga sangat ditentukan oleh bagaimana umat Islam menampilkan potret dirinya di hadapan dunia. Karena itu, dibutuhkan cara-cara kreatif dalam mengetengahkan paras Islam sesungguhnya kepada publik dunia. Demikian perbincangan Novriantoni dari Jaringan Islam Liberal (JIL), Kamis lalu (8/9), dengan Nadia Madjid, praktisi media Amerika, yang sudah bekerja di Voice of America sejak 5 tahun silam.
Persepsi media massa Amerika tentang Islam juga sangat ditentukan oleh bagaimana umat Islam menampilkan potret dirinya di hadapan dunia. Karena itu, dibutuhkan cara-cara kreatif dalam mengetengahkan paras Islam sesungguhnya kepada publik dunia. Demikian perbincangan Novriantoni dari Jaringan Islam Liberal (JIL), Kamis lalu (8/9), dengan Nadia Madjid, praktisi media Amerika, yang sudah bekerja di Voice of America sejak 5 tahun silam.
NOVRIANTONI (JIL): Mbak Nadya, beberapa waktu lalu Presiden AS, George W Bush, kembali menegaskan bahwa AS sedang berperang melawan apa yang ia sebut kelompok fasis Islam (Islamic fascist) yang sedang berjuang melawan nilai-nilai kebebasan Barat. Bisakah Anda gambarkan persepsi media massa AS tentang Islam saat ini?
Nadya MadjidNADYA MADJID: Pertama, persepsi masyarakat Amerika tentang Islam kurang lebih memang dibentuk oleh media. Tapi itu bukan berarti para elit politik Amerika juga mampu mendiktekan persepsi media tentang apa yang sedang mereka inginkan. Kalau Pemerintahan Bush sedang membangun persepsi tentang musuhnya lewat slogan perang melawan terorisme (war on teror), media Amerika tidak akan bisa terus-menerus terpengaruh oleh penggunakan istilah itu. Dalam pengamatan saya, media massa di Amerika cukup independen dalam tugasnya.
Bagi saya, yang membentuk persepsi media Amerika terhadap Islam dan dunia Islam adalah apa yang sedang terjadi di kalangan umat Islam dan dunia Islam sendiri. Misalnya tentang apa yang terjadi di Irak setelah ageresi Amerika di sana. Kini, sudah banyak media massa Amerika yang mulai mempertanyakan banyaknya anak-anak Amerika yang terbunuh setelah dikirimkan untuk menjaga stabilitas ke sana. Yang juga disorot, mengapa masih terjadi konflik Sunni-Syiah. Dari situ mereka melihat masih adanya tindak kekerasan di antara sesama masyarakat muslim sendiri. Media Amerika juga rutin melihat apa yang terjadi di Afganistan dan beberapa tempat di Indonesia, terutama jika ada konflik-konflik yang terkait dengan perberbedaan agama.
Terkait soal Islam tadi, yang paling dilihat media Amerika sampai saat ini adalah kurangnya suara-suara moderat Islam yang secara tegas mengutuk tindak-tindak kekerasan yang dilakukan oleh para tersangka terorisme yang melibatkan mereka-mereka yang memakai label Islam. Itu yang sangat mereka sayangkan.
Beberapa waktu lalu, ada sebuah sebuah survei menarik yang dilakukan oleh CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), sebuah dewan yang membina hubungan antara warga Amerika dengan warga Islam. Dari survei itu mereka menyimpulkan bahwa mayoritas warga Amerika bersedia mengubah persepsi mereka menjadi lebih baik terhadap masyarakat muslim seandainya mereka melihat empat hal.
69% responden survei mengatakan akan mengubah persepsinya tentang Islam seandainya komunitas muslim lebih menyuarakan suara-suara tidak setuju atau mengutuk tindakan-tindakan terorisme. Selama ini, mereka merasa kurang mendengarkan itu. Kedua, jika perlakuan masayarakat muslim terhadap perempuan lebih baik lagi. Ketiga, jika umat muslim lebih berusaha membuka diri dan bergaul dengan warga Amerika. Keempat, bila umat muslim tampak lebih toleran terhadap warga nonmuslim di negeri-negeri muslim sendiri.
JIL: Apakah beberapa pandangan negatif itu didasarkan pada fakta di masyarakat muslim Amerika atau hanya dugaan media saja?
Dalam pemilihan berita, media mana saja memang selalu mempertimbangkan apakah berita itu akan menarik pendengar, pembaca, atau penonton yang lebih luas atau tidak. Kriteria semacam itu harus kita akui. Mungkin itu suatu kesalahan dalam bermedia. Tapi saya melihat, fakta-fakta tentang tindakan-tindakan baik yang dilakukan oleh banyak muslim, selalu teredam oleh tindakan-tindakan yang lebih bombastis, seperti tindakan terorisme yang membunuh banyak orang sekaligus.
JIL: Anda ingin mengatakan bahwa umat Islam sendirilah yang membentuk citra diri mereka di hadapan media Amerika?
Saya rasa, umat Islam memang harus melihat ke dalam dulu. Memang, tindakan banyak politikus atau penguasa Amerika saat ini juga tidak bisa dimaafkan. Tetapi apa yang menjadi pilihan mereka di dalam negrinya sendiri bukanlah urusan kita. Mereka sudah punya sistem sendiri yang dapat menciptakan checks and recheck yang bisa menampilkan objektivitas dan keadilan dalam apa yang mereka lihat.
Terbukti, sekarang banyak sekali warga Amerika yang mulai mengakui bahwa perang di Irak adalah perang yang salah. Tapi perubahan persepsi itu tentu bukan urusan kita. Yang harus kita pikirkan adalah bagaimana mengubah persepsi orang lain dengan menampilkan gambaran bahwa agama kita adalah agama kedamaian dan agama kita adalah agama yang mengajarkan hal-hal yang baik.
JIL: Tidakkah beberapa media Amerika sudah mengidap semacam ketakutan yang berlebih-lebihan terhadap ancaman Islam dengan terlalu banyak mengekspos sosok-sosok seperti Usamah bin Laden?
Saya kira, media Amerika tidak sedang berniat menyudutkan umat Islam sendiri. Saya selalu membaca beberapa tajuk rencana koran Amerika. Di situ banyak sekali kritisisme atas ulah rezimnya sendiri. Misalnya ketika Presiden Bush menyampaikan pidato berdurasi 44 menit dengan menyebut nama Usama bin Laden sebanyak 17 kali. Kritik para insan pers di Amerika kira-kira seperti ini: ”Wah, Bush lagi-lagi menggunakan taktik untuk memperkuat posisinya sebagai pemimpin Amerika dengan menakut-nakuti warga Amerika.”
Jadi, kalau dilihat dari situ, media Amerika masih terlihat cukup independen dalam menilai situasi dunia dan Islam khususnya. Tapi sayangnya, suara-suara moderat Islam memang kurang terdengar. Tidak ada fenomena berbondong-bondongnya umat Islam mengutuk tindakan-tindakan para pembom bunuh diri atau aksi perencana pemboman pesawat terbang, dan aksi-aksi lainnya.
JIL: Apakah persepsi media massa Amerika terhadap Islam sudah berdampak pada kehidupan sehari-hari umat Islam di Amerika? Beberapa laporan menyebutkan, anak-anak muslim berwajah Arab kini dipanggil Usamah...
Saya rasa itu fenomena yang tidak umum. Sebab sebelum tragedi 11 September 2001, kehidupan sehari-hari umat Islam Amerika tidak terlalu kentara dalam masyarakat Amerika. Bahkan ada kritik terhadap masyarakat Islam karena dianggap kurang banyak bergaul dengan masyarakat di luar komunitas muslim. Tapi setelah 11 September, keadaan mulai berubah. Orang Amerika mulai bertanya-tanya siapakah para teroris itu, apa paham mereka, dan apakah ajaran Islam juga terlibat di dalamnya?
Sampai tahun 2004, pusat penelitian PEW menemukan kenyataan bahwa hanya 2% respondennya yang mengaku sangat tahu tentang Islam. Selebihnya mungkin tidak peduli atau tidak tahu-menahu. Tapi beberapa stereotipe tentang Islam memang sudah ada dan itu telah menjadi bahan olokan bagi para komedian Amerika sejak dulu. Parodi dan cara menampilkan steriotipe seperti itu juga sudah banyak dilakukan mereka, terutama terhadap warga kulit hitam, orang Yahudi, ataupun orang-orang Kristen yang baru melek Kristen.
JIL: Teknik seperti itu mungkin biasa dan membuat orang Amerika tertawa. Tapi bagaimana umat Islam Amerika menanggapinya?
Saya rasa, kita memang harus mulai coba menertawakan diri sendiri. Setelah 11 September, di Amerika banyak juga bermunculan komedian muslim yang melakukan tur dalam rangka memasang wajah Islam yang humoris. Dan mereka-mereka itu tampaknya sudah bisa menertawakan diri sendiri. Misalnya, untuk menyindir adanya hak laki-laki untuk berpunya lebih dari satu istri, mereka menampilkan lakon suami yang lupa nama para istrinya. Atau, dia tidak ingat lagi anaknya dihasilkan dari istri yang mana. Bagi orang Amerika, Anda jangan merasa terlalu penting untuk tidak bisa diparodikan.
Saya pernah menonton aksi seorang komedian perempuan muslim Amerika yang berbadan gemuk. Dia bercerita kalau dia pernah dipanggil petugas keamanan karena dikira sedang membawa bom di pinggangnya. Lalu dia bilang, ”Oh, ini bukan bom, tapi lemak saya!” Sontak, orang-orang yang menyaksikannya tertawa.
Jadi, parodi-parodi seperti itu sangat umum di Amerika dan mungkin akan makin banyak. Salah satu iklim yang cukup positif di Amerika adalah kuatnya hak tiap orang untuk mengutarakan pendapatnya sebebas mungkin. Dan itu sangat baik diutarakan lewat humor. Tapi saya rasa, humor-humor seperti itu mungkin belum bisa dihidupkan di luar Amerika.
JIL: Salah satu persepsi Amerika tentang umat Islam adalah soal perbedaan sistem nilai dan budaya yang mereka anut dengan yang dianut orang-orang Islam, terutama yang puritan. Apakah orang-orang Islam Amerika menganut nilai-nilai Islam yang puritan sehingga dianggap bertentangan secara diametral dengan nilai-nilai kebebasan Amerika?
Tidak. Saya rasa orang Islam di Amerika, sebagaimana yang saya bayangkan sejak lama, sudah sangat menghargai kebebasan dan individualitas. Mereka berpaham bahwa seseorang yang beriman itu akan memikul dosanya sendiri-sendiri, bukan ditimpakan pada orang lain. Ibadah kita merupakan tanggung jawab kita langsung kepada Tuhan, tidak perlu diawasi negara. Jadi, Islam yang diterapkan di Amerika juga adalah agama yang sangat pribadi, yang sangat individual. Kalau saya mau salat, saya bisa salat di kantor dan itu tidak akan mengganggu orang-orang yang bekerja dengan saya.
Justru karena mereka begitu privat dalam cara beragamanya, orang-orang nonmuslim menganggap mereka cukup misterus. Tapi setelah 11 September, orang Amerika mulai bertanya-tanya: apakah Islam itu begitu? Dalam sejarah Amerika, hanya sekarang saja angka penjualan Alqur’an dan buku-buku tentang Islam begitu tinggi. Bahkan, lembaga yang menjembatani hubungan antara Islam dan warga Amerika, CAIR, pernah membagi-bagikan Alquran gratis agar masyarakat Amerika lebih mengenal Islam dari Alqur’an langsung.
JIL: Apakah persepsi media Amerika tentang Islam ikut mengubah pola hidup orang Islam Amerika agar misalnya lebih kompromistis dengan pola hidup dan kebudayaan Amerika?
Saya rasa, pola hidup warga muslim Amerika setelah 11 September tidak banyak berubah. Mereka tetap menjalankan ibadah dan tradisi mereka, bahkan tradisi yang datang dari negeri asalnya. Satu hal yang mungkin berbeda: kini mereka lebih mengerti harus berkata apa saat disodorkan pertanyaan-pertanyaan tentang apa itu Islam, apakah benar Islam mengajarkan kekerasan, dan hal-hal seperti itu. Mereka kini dituntut untuk siap menjelaskan hal seperti itu.
Saya punya pengalaman kecil dalam soal seperti itu saat naik taksi. Supirnya, seorang berkulit hitam, bertanya: ”Anda dari Thailand, ya?” Saya bilang, saya dari Indonesia. Terus dia bilang, ”Oh Indonesia. Di mana ya negaranya?” Saya timpali, ”Wah, Anda kok tidak tahu Indonesia. Padahal Indonesia itu negeri berpenduduk muslim terbesar di dunia.” Dia bilang, ”Ah, masak!” Terus dia nanya, ”Anda muslim?” Saya jawab, ya. ”Kok tidak berjilbab?” tanyanya lagi. ”Saya menganut paham bahwa saya tidak harus berjilbab,” jawab saya.
Terus dia nanya lagi, ”Kenapa perempuan muslim mesti berjilbab?” Saya jawab, ”Ya, karena ada ajaran bahwa seorang perempuan harus menjaga dirinya dari penglihatan orang-orang lain yang bukan muhrimnya.” ”Berarti, itu dijaga dan ditutupi hanya untuk suaminya?” tanya dia lagi. Saya bilang, ya. Lalu dia bilang: ”Oh, indah sekali bagiku.” Dia tertawa, tapi respek dengan jawaban saya.
Bagi saya, walau itu pengetahuan yang kecil tentang Islam, tapi setidaknya stereotipe tentang Islam itu tidak menjadi barang asing dan tabu baginya. Itu sudah cukup bagi saya, karena dengan begitu, dogma agama kita tidak terlalu dianggapnya serius dan menakutkan bagi dia.
O, ya, dalam pembicaraan itu saya juga sempat membandingkan antara muslimah yang berjilbab dengan para biarawati yang juga mengenakan penutup kepala dan lain-lain. Saya bilang, para biarawati itu juga menutupi tubuhnya karena mereka juga ingin membatasi gerak-gerik dan keinginannya. Dia jadi lebih mengerti karena itu dekat dengan ajaran agamanya. Jadi, paralelisme pandangan seperti itulah yang mungkin perlu diketengahkan dan digalakkan oleh umat Islam dalam berdialog dengan nonmuslim.
Dan memang, 59% responden survei CAIR mengatakan bahwa seharusnya kalangan muslim lebih banyak mengatakan hal-hal yang sama atau sisi-sisi kesamaan Islam dengan agama lainnya, terutama dalam proses berdialog dan berinteraksi dengan nonmuslim. Perlu ditunjukkan apa sih yang sama antara Islam dengan ajaran-ajaran Kristen, Yahudi, atau agama lainnya, sehingga Islam tidak menjadi barang asing atau paham yang amat berseberangan dengan mereka.
JIL: Tapi yang banyak disoroti media Barat dan terutama Amerika saat ini kan doktrin Islam yang lebih ortodoks. Apakah itu yang dianggap sebagai ancaman oleh Amerika?
Dari sisi doktrin sih, tidak. Media masa Amerika baru melihatnya sebagai ancaman ketika sudah terjadi tindakan kriminal. Saya melihat, media massa Amerika tidak sedang menggugat ajaran Islam itu sendiri, atau mencap sekolah-sekolah tertentu bertanggungjawab atas tindak kriminal yang dilakukan beberapa umat Islam. Mereka memang sepakat kalau para kriminil harus dihukum. Tapi yang jadi pertanyaan mereka: mengapa tidak ada dari kalangan Islam atau sekolahan tertentu yang mengatakan bahwa mereka memang layak dihukum. Itu saja.
JIL: Mbak Nadya, bisakan dikatakan kalau kritisisme media Amerika saat ini sangat kurang dalam menanggapi watak imperialis dan kecenderungan unilateral rezim Bush dalam bertindak terhadap banyak negara?
Saya melihat, justru saat inilah media Amerika semakin panas dalam mengkritik rezim Bush. Para pembuat tajuk rencana di banyak surat kabar sudah terlihat sangat pedas dalam mengkritik Bush. Minggu lalu, seorang wartawan Amerika terlibat percekcokan dengan penanggungjawab media Gedung Putih karena kritik keras wartawan itu terhadap Bush dan pemerintahannya. Jadi, kalau dilihat dari aspek itu, kritisisme medianya Amerika sudah cukup memadai. Karena itu, sekarang sudah banyak orang Amerika yang berpaling dari partainya Bush, Partai Republik. Para pendukung liberalisme di Amerika juga sudah mulai berbondong-bondong menyatakan ketidaksetujuan mereka terhadap status quo yang sekarang berlaku di Amerika.
Jadi, saya melihat media Amerika sudah cukup proporsial dalam mengkritik Bush. Sebab saya tinggal di Washington, dan belakangan ini sering sekali melihat diadakannya demo-demo menentang Bush. Waktu berita tentang agresi Isreal di Lebanon kemarin sedang panas-panasnya, baik pendukung Libanon atau Suriah, pendukung Hamas atau Israel, sama-sama berdemonstrasi secara berdampingan. Jadi di dalam negeri Amerika sendiri sudah berkecamuk banyak keberatan terhadap apa yang terjadi saat ini.
Saya kira, salah satu kelebihan masyarakat Amerika dalam bermedia adalah: mereka sudah memiliki sistem pemerintahan yang mantap, sehingga proses check and balance bisa diterapkan dengan baik. Dengan begitu, rakyat Amerika dengan gampang bisa melihat masa depan mereka. Kini mereka seakan mengatakan, ”Kami sudah melakukan kesalahan dalam memilih presiden yang terlihat kurang kompeten. Itu berarti di masa yang akan datang, kami tidak akan memilih seperti dia lagi.” []
William Stanton: I botched our suicide pact - Times OnlineEarly one morning in September, William Stanton heard footsteps coming up the stairs of his cottage in Somerset. He knew who it was and panicked. “I shouted out: ‘Go away, Nigel, leave me to it, leave me to it!’”
Nigel, a neighbour and family friend, did not go away. He came into the bedroom and found Stanton in distress and his wife Angela lying dead with a plastic bag over her head.
The Stantons had made a pact to end their lives together and put it into effect just days after the director of public prosecutions revealed how he would apply the law prohibiting assisted suicide. It did not work out as they planned and stands as a terrible cautionary example for anybody thinking that self-inflicted death is easily arranged.
I met Stanton last week in the neat and pretty bedroom where Angela’s body was found. I noted a commode in the corner and a trolley-load of pills beside Stanton, who was sitting up in bed. He is 79 and obviously unwell — his doctors say bone cancer will kill him in three to eight months — but he complained only that the pills make him lethargic.
He is being looked after by one of his two daughters. She sits in with us but does not want to feature in the story except to say, forcefully, that the strain on her father is immense and this will absolutely be the only interview he does.
From his bed, the view from the window includes Glastonbury Tor in the distance and a garden whose beauty he credits entirely to his wife, using the present tense to describe Angela, as he does several times during our conversation.
“She finishes lunch, has a half-hour nap, then I see her tootle out. I know that she is up and at it — she can’t keep still.”
His eyes moisten several times, particularly when he reads aloud an account he wrote, for their golden wedding anniversary in 2007, of his first glimpse of her in Kensington Gardens in 1953 and his efforts to get to know her.
“I noticed a slim and shapely young female walking ahead of me,” he says. “I was in no hurry, so I slowed my pace. She spoke to a gardener and I noticed a pleasant smile.”
He was delighted to see her going into the entrance of Imperial College, where he was a student. “Not entirely by accident I encountered her in the corridor, made some remark and was rewarded by that smile.
“Later I followed her to South Kensington where she took the lift to the Piccadilly line. I ran down and bought a ticket to be beside her on the crowded platform. ‘Have I not seen you at the registry?’ was my gambit.”
She was an optician’s daughter, he learnt, from Hillingdon, five years younger than him, “and willing to go out with me one day after work”.
He puts the paper down carefully, tears falling down his face.
Four years ago he was diagnosed with cancer. “For three years it didn’t make a big difference, but a year ago I found I couldn’t do odd jobs about the house. I was falling behind and not keeping up with what I might be expected to do.”
After Angela’s suicide, the couple’s daughters issued a statement saying that the strain of caring for William had just been too much for her. But that is not the whole story because about two years ago — before his decline started — Angela said to him: “When you go, I want to go too.”
He had not expected this. How did he respond? He pauses to remember, wrinkling his brow.
“I would have said, ‘Are you sure? How can you possibly be so sure?’ She said, ‘We have been together for so long, I would not want to be left on my own to cope with a world that I was not familiar with’.
“We thought, we have had a wonderful life and it was clearly coming to an end. Much better to go out on a high. Why let it be spoilt by all the pains of old age? Anyone sensible would say the same.”
As far as he is concerned, that view is perfectly understandable. But Angela was only 74 when she died, in good health, with many years ahead of her. He says she gave him no alternative. She always wanted to get on with something once she had made her mind up.
It took them a while to work out how they could kill themselves. Eventually Stanton remembered being taught, as a young geologist training for cave diving, that suffocating in the absence of carbon dioxide was painless.
They tried to procure nitrogen, but without success. Then they hit on the idea of using helium instead. “That’s easy, you can buy it for party balloons,” he says.
They ordered a canister of helium and when they had everything, Angela suggested they should check it would work. “I said, ‘If you would be happier, we will run through it as an experiment to see if the apparatus will do the job’.
“We sat on the sofa and each of us put a big plastic bag on our heads.” There was a bit of a fuss finding out how to switch on the helium (“not as simple as you might think”), but when that was resolved they filled the bags.
Because this was helium, it made their conversation, from under the plastic bags, high-pitched. “We decided that we felt a bit woozy, so for a joke I said, ‘Why don’t we just go now?’ She said: ‘Oh no, we’re not ready yet’.”
She did not realise it was a joke?
“She couldn’t always tell, with me.”
That was in July.
Over the next few weeks they set about seeing old friends and family, including their two daughters, now in their forties — but without telling anybody their plans. They had long ago written their wills and now wrote goodbye letters urging people not to waste time being miserable, then invented a pretext for their neighbour Nigel to come into the house soon after they had gassed themselves.
Finding two old friends dead with plastic bags on their heads could have been devastating, I point out. “He’s a sensible chap. And if we’d told him beforehand, he might have said he wasn’t going through with it.”
For the same reason, they did not tell their daughters. “They might not have agreed and it would have caused a big family row.”
For legal reasons we do not discuss how Angela died, though Stanton does say this: “We had rehearsed it beforehand. She knew exactly what to do and she did it. I didn’t do anything physically to help her.”
What went wrong with his own suicide attempt?
“When I put the bag over my head it was too small. There wasn’t enough space for the gas to flow freely around my head. Although I found it hard to breathe, I was choking and that was wrong. It should have been easy. So I tore it off and tried again. I realised what the trouble was. I tried to find a bigger plastic bag but I couldn’t. And then I could hear Nigel coming up the stairs.”
How did Stanton feel afterwards?
“Awful. Awful. That’s all I can say.”
Did he regret it?
“I would rather have waited and done a proper job.” He says he would try again if he got the chance, but that seems unlikely.
He is aware of what he calls “the tedious Dignitas”, the Swiss clinic where many Britons have ended their lives, but he says he never liked the idea of going there: “Doing it here seemed so obvious and easy.” He claims he cannot wait to be buried alongside Angela in a woodland site on Salisbury Plain.
Shortly after Angela’s death, a spokesman for Avon and Somerset police said: “The body of an elderly woman was found in her home in Westbury-sub-Mendip after someone visiting the address discovered her dead in her bedroom. A man aged 79 was arrested on suspicion of her murder at the address and taken into custody.” He was released, on bail, into the custody of his sister. Later his daughters arrived from their homes in Wales and Oxfordshire. Between them they have looked after him on a rota.
Stanton grew up in Street, in Somerset, among Quakers. His father was a conscientious objector in the first world war and was taken to France to be shot, but reprieved — an experience that his mother always spoke about with reverence, he says.
It is interesting that he, too, has been reprieved by the failure of his suicide attempt — though of course he regrets it.
As a boy he had an affection for the outdoors, nature and science, exploring local caves that he carried on visiting until as recently as 18 months ago. At school he was captain of the rugby team, and at university threw himself into mountaineering, which went well with his studies in geology.
“There was a lot of original geology still to be done,” he says, brightening at the memory. “Rocks to hit and look at under a lens.”
He did his PhD at Imperial College and after marrying Angela spent some years abroad, including a spell in Angola where they were caught up in the revolution during her first pregnancy.
Altogether, he worked for 20 years for mining companies and another 20 years as a consulting geologist for Wessex Water and the Bristol Avon River Authority. He is the author of many scientific papers, two books on the Mendip caves — and a comprehensive book of research, with vigorous polemical interpretation, The Rapid Growth of Human Populations 1750-2000.
One of Britain’s foremost advocates of population control, Stanton is convinced that global resources, including oil, are in terminal decline and that the UK population must shrink from about 60m today to 2m by 2150.
Here is how: by allowing women only one child each; banning immigration and putting arrivals, like all criminals, to work in chain gangs; and humanely ending an individual’s life when, through old age, injury or disease, he or she becomes more of a burden than a benefit.
“The alternative is starvation, lawlessness, mass murder and squalor. Either way, the population can’t avoid shrinking.”
Before meeting him I read his book, and the many articles and letters he has written for anybody who will print them, from his local paper to New Scientist. Inevitably I wondered whether his suicide pact had as much to do with planetary angst as escaping the worst effects of cancer. I am still not sure.
In its own terms his population study makes perfect sense. But politically it is a non-starter. Which government would dare to impose it?
Stanton insists that if something is thinkable, even remotely, it must be possible. The sacrifices people made in the second world war would have seemed unthinkable just a short while beforehand, he says.
What is more, he adds, some people might actively welcome legal euthanasia.
“My mother struggled looking after my father who had Alzheimer’s. We talked about it. He was totally incontinent and she was tidying his bed. It was very cold weather at the time. I said, why do you keep him warm at night? You could leave the windows open and let him die of exposure. She said she couldn’t.”
Why not? “Habit.”
Despite his Quaker upbringing, Stanton the scientist clearly shares Richard Dawkins’s opinion of religion, which he presents as a ragbag of patently false legends and no guide to conduct. A hard-boiled Darwinist, he contends that life is nothing more or less than ruthless competition.
He has no time for the classical Christian condemnation of euthanasia. “These busybodies say you can’t do it, we know about Jesus and what he said. They say your relatives might want you dead to get your money. Well that’s true, but lots of other bad things happen in the world . . .”
Until oil was discovered, he says, the idea that people had a right to life would be regarded as laughable. “Landowners joked, in medieval England, that their poorest tenants were ‘harvest-sensitive’. In other words, they were expected to die in lean years ... Compassion is a luxury available to people enjoying peace and plenty.”
I ask Stanton if anybody has expressed disapproval about what he did on that morning in September. “Not to us,” he says. Friends he has not heard from since school have written letters. Local cavers made a presentation that his daughter is getting framed. “I can’t think of anyone who hasn’t been kind. I’m sure that must say something — that they approve of what we have done.”
Is is not possible that they only pity him and wish him well?
It has been a long and difficult conversation. “Well, I’m not going to argue,” he says.
The DPP, Dignitas and the risks of prosecution
Assisting a suicide is illegal in the UK and carries a jail term of up to 14 years.
More than 100 Britons with terminal or incurable illnesses have travelled to the Dignitas euthanasia clinic in Switzerland to die. None of the relatives and friends involved in the cases have been prosecuted, although several, including Julie and Mark James, have been interviewed by police on their return to Britain. Their son Daniel, 23, took his own life at Dignitas after being paralysed in a rugby accident. All three are pictured, right.
Keir Starmer QC, the director of public prosecutions (DPP), has recently published guidelines that set out 16 factors that could persuade the authorities to consider prosecution.
Questions to consider include: whether someone suspected of assisting a suicide stood to gain financially from the death, and whether the person who died was pressured, suffering from a mental illness or was under 18.
The guidelines also list 13 factors that would influence a decision against prosecution.These include a scenario in which someone freely asked for help to commit suicide and one in which the person who assisted was motivated wholly by compassion and was a spouse, partner, close relative or friend. As was widely pointed out at the time of the guidelines’ publication, they do not make matters much clearer.
In all cases of suspected assisted suicide, the British police investigate. The final decision on whether to prosecute is taken by the DPP and a small senior team of officials in the Crown Prosecution Service.
There have been several attempts to legalise assisted suicide in the UK. The most recent, in 2006, was defeated in the House of Lords by 148 votes to 100.
Assisted suicide has been allowed in Switzerland since 1940 if it involves someone who is not a physician and who has no vested interest in the death. Every year there are about 400 cases in Switzerland, 132 of which involve patients from abroad.
Investigators try to understand reasons behind Major Hasan’s rampage - Times OnlineInvestigators have begun piecing together a harrowing story of missed clues and sudden carnage left by an army psychiatrist who gunned down more than 40 people on a Texas army base, killing 13, when faced with the prospect of deploying to a war he wished President Obama had ended.
At the time, the signs that Major Nidal Malik Hasan was close to breaking point went unnoticed. Hours later they were being logged as evidence in a case that is likely to end in the death penalty for the sole suspect in the worst mass shooting on a US military post in recent history.
The day before Major Hasan smuggled two registered handguns into the Soldier Readiness Processing Centre at Fort Hood and started firing, he had knocked on neighbours’ doors and offered shelves, a lamp and frozen broccoli from a flat to which he did not expect to return.
He also distributed several copies of the Koran, telling one confused recipient that he was moving to Oklahoma and another that he was deploying to Iraq.
The truth was infinitely more troubling. First, he drove on to the sprawling base in central Texas to which he had been assigned in July after a six-year stint at America’s largest hospital for wounded veterans, in Washington.
Wearing a white salmar kameez and cap, he stopped as usual at a convenience store for a breakfast of hash browns and coffee. Closed-circuit television footage aired repeatedly on US news networks yesterday showed Major Hasan’s incongruous and somewhat chubby figure smiling as he pocketed his change and headed for the door.
His workplace was the Darnall Hospital near the southern entrance to Fort Hood, a short drive from his home in neighbouring Killeen.
How much time he spent there was unclear but some time before 1.30pm he made the short journey, a few blocks west, to the building where 300 uniformed personnel were receiving final vaccinations and eyesight checks before being sent overseas.
When he began shooting, the orderly lines of soldiers queuing for treatment dissolved in seconds into bloody chaos.
Witnesses described soldiers tearing off their shirts to staunch the bleeding of those hit in a ten-minute rampage during which Major Hasan may have had time to reload his weapons, and friendly fire may have added to the casualties.
One soldier who was hit in the initial fusillade said: “I made the mistake of moving and I was shot again.”
A female civilian police officer on contract to the US Army, Kimberly Munley, shot Major Hasan four times and was being described as a hero without whom the death toll could have been far higher.
But by the time the gunman was brought down she and more than 40 others had been hit. She and Major Hasan were among the 30 people wounded but in stable condition being treated in military and civilian hospitals throughout the region.
“She happened to encounter the gunman. In an exchange of gunfire she was wounded but managed to wound him four times,” a base spokesman said. “It was an amazing and aggressive performance.”
Sergeant Steve Hagerman, a military police officer and Iraq war veteran, was one of the first on the scene after the shooting.
“You’re always surprised how much carnage there is,” he said, drawing an unconscious parallel between the tragedy on what should have been one of the most secure bases in the US and scenes he had witnessed in Iraq.
A lifelong Muslim, Major Hasan had told colleagues that he was willing to deploy to Afghanistan but not to Iraq. Officials confirmed yesterday that he was due to be sent to Iraq this month, and Lieutenant-General Bob Cone, the base commander, relayed unconfirmed reports that before starting to shoot the gunman had yelled “Allah Akhbar” — “God is great”.
President Obama, in his second set of televised remarks on the massacre, said he had been briefed yesterday morning by the head of the FBI and urged Americans not to rush to judgment as evidence was gathered and associates of the suspect found and interviewed. “We don’t know all the answers yet and I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts,” the President said.
He said he had ordered flags on federal buildings to be flown at half-mast nationwide until Veterans’ Day, next Wednesday. Mr Obama is expected to attend a memorial at Fort Hood.
A spokesman for the Hasan family, which has Palestinian roots, called Major Hasan’s actions “despicable and deplorable”. He insisted in a statement that the killings did not reflect the suspect’s upbringing as a US citizen born and raised in Virginia.
In Maryland police were interviewing former colleagues of the gunman at the military university where he studied the effects of traumatic stress on combat veterans, and where he worshipped at a mosque in Silver Spring.
Faizul Khan, a former imam there, said: “I got the impression that he was a committed soldier.”
The American Muslim community distanced itself from the actions of a “rogue” gunman yesterday, drawing attention to the thousands of Muslims “who serve honourably every day in all four branches of the US military”, as the Arab American Institute said.
The full text of posting by Major Nidal Hasan on the “social publishing” site Scribd.com:
“There was a grenade thrown among a group of American soldiers. One of the soldiers, feeling that it was to late for everyone to flee jumped on the grave with the intention of saving his comrades. Indeed he saved them. He inentionally took his life (suicide) for a noble cause i.e. saving the lives of his soldier. To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. Its more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause. Scholars have paralled this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers. If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory. Their intention is not to die because of some despair. The same can be said for the Kamikazees in Japan. They died (via crashing their planes into ships) to kill the enemies for the homeland. You can call them crazy i you want but their act was not one of suicide that is despised by Islam. So the scholars main point is that ‘IT SEEMS AS THOUGH YOUR INTENTION IS THE MAIN ISSUE’ and Allah (SWT) knows best.”
Plug in, log on ... and take care | Opinion | News.com.auDEAR young MySpacer and Facebooker: You think the internet is a lawless frontier, a place to ignore convention and regulation and just write, free from pesky rules like spelling and social expectation.
You type things such as: "Nah. cant go. So keen but. :) (expletive) mum wont let me go. Dont know wot her last slave died of. Sucks. But im doing alright aye. U?"
We adults don't know what that really means. We are left in the communication gloom, understanding only skerricks but enough to get the drift that yours is a tribe to which we do not belong. And we know that is the way you like it.
You see logging on to Facebook or MySpace as familiar and fresh all at once. Feels wild and free, doesn't it? You can paint your space anyway you want, put swear words up and have an angry theme song as your background music. You can show how smart you are by including cool artwork and philosophy.
You write what you feel and say what you really think. You rail against whatever it is that makes you feel the way you do.
It feels good to put into writing what's going on in that up-and-down frame of mind of yours - to say it loudly and to have people hear you and respond.
They make you feel listened to and that what you think and say matters.
But keep this in mind, young web-user: you are not just having some harmless fun and you are not playing in the communication paddling pool when you plug in and log on. You have entered the world of publishing. And, any writer or editor will tell you, that comes with big responsibilities.
Here's the tip: if you hate someone, are mad at something they have done or even want them dead, saying that in print (even electronic print) can land you in a world of trouble.
All that is needed for a person to launch a defamation action is for you to say something that makes others think less of them and for you to publish it to at least one other person.
Having all those eager MySpace and Facebook friends makes that easy.
Defamation is a tort, or a civil wrong. It is built on the idea that everyone has a duty of care not to do others harm and if harm is done, courts can help make it right. And just a little bit of info to tuck away in your need-to-know folder: you, a person under adult age, are liable for your own wrongs. You might think that because you are not an adult, you do not have to worry about the law, but you do. That myth has legs because no one has taken a legal stick to the young and libellous yet.
All it is going to take is for someone to get seriously sick of a schoolkid dragging their name through the internet dirt and bingo: a landmark case will stop those who want to defame and besmirch others' reputations because of some personal axe to grind in their typing tracks. It is going to happen. Maybe to you.
Last year a Victorian man had to publish public apologies in two major newspapers after comments he made about a family through his Facebook page. The man had been threatened with suits for defamatory allegations against people he had once known. While contacting a person he wanted to add as a "friend", the man sent an additional message alleging criminality about someone else.
But his new Facebook friend was a friend of the family he was making the allegations against. The message was passed on to others across two states. In your words, oops and fail for him.
The case was the first time social networking sites in Australia had been roped into defamation action.
In the UK last year, businessman Mathew Firsht was awarded pound22,000 ($39,900) in defamation damages after a former friend set up false Facebook profiles in his name.
The fake info was only up for a short time but the courts deemed it was long enough to do him harm.
So much of the focus of young people's internet use has been on safety. We oldies tell you: never give your bank details; whatever you do, don't reveal specific information on your profile, like the name of your netball team or the school you go to.
Many of us are paranoid that some loony is going to steal your identity, or worse, your innocence and trust.
While all that is very concerning, I think maybe we should start encouraging young people not to commit crimes as well as avoid being victims.
Too many treat the internet like the Wild West and publish whatever they please about whoever they want.
When you fling excrement through cyberspace, some of it sticks.
And what a virtual and legal mess you will have made.
Think about that. Be careful.
Woman passes driving test after 950 tries | Weird True Freaky | News.com.auA SOUTH Korean woman has passed a written exam for a driver's licence after 950 attempts.
Cha Sa-soon, 68, attempted the test almost every day since April 2005, the Associated Press reported.
She passed the written exam with a score of 60, a police official at the drivers’ licence agency in Jeonju, south of Seoul, said.
Mrs Sa-soon must now pass a driving test before getting her licence.
She told the Korea Times newspaper she needed the licence for her vegetable-selling business.
