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Alam
part eccentric ... part fun .... stubborn .. but not stuck up ... very open to different views, ideas and possibilities ... varied interests ... engineer ... mba ... trying-to-be-a-good-entrepreneur ... ex-software ... ex-quality ... ex-tobacco ... ex-alcohol ... trying-to-be-ex-cancer
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Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Graceless on TV

Yesterday I spent a lot of time watching TV ... there was the T20 final and lots of bed time latter because I was tired after not eating the whole day (had a PET scan ... which required me to come empty stomach ... so hadn't eaten anything after previous night's dinner ... and since AIIMS is a "sarkaari" hospital, the scan scheduled for10 in morning actually took place at 4 in the evening ... leaving me hungry for longer than I could take)

So I was watching the TV and was stuck by total lack of grace from 2 people ... First was the Pakistani Captain ... he first thanked and then apologized to all the Muslims in the world ... I wondered why? He looked silly cause obviously all Muslims in the world had not supported his team ... infact we can do some calculations and find out his support levels ...

Here we go -

Reasonable assumptions
A> Muslims in India will support India (their own country)
B> Muslims in Bangladesh will not support Pakistan team (Bongs fought Pakis for their independence)
C> Muslims in non-cricket playing countries (like Indonesia) will not be interested in cricket and will support no one.

Now Numbers
World Muslim Population - 1500 million
Muslims in Cricket playing nations - 451 million
Muslims in Pakistan - 158 million
Muslims in India - 150 million
Muslims in Bangladesh - 135 million

Scenarios

Best Scenario for Pak Captain - All cricket interested Muslims except Indians and Bangladeshis support him (166 Million, slightly unlikely as there is no reason for all Kenyan, South African, Britisher etc etc Muslims to support Pakistan)
This translates int0 11.1% of world Muslim support and 36.8% of cricket interested Muslim support

Worst Scenario for Pak Captain - Only Pakistani Muslims support him (158 million, very likely)
This translates into 10.5% of World Muslim Support and 35% of cricket interested Muslim support

Bottom-line is that only 1 in 10 Muslims of the world would have supported him. Even in the cricket playing world only about one third Muslims would have supported him. He made a fool of himself by claiming global Muslim support. Two of my friends have written on this very topic. Samcho in his post Twenty20 and Siddhartha in his post ICC World Twenty20, Religion and myth-busting.

Now on to the second person who lacked grace ... it was Columbia University's President Lee Bollinger.... He invited Iran's president Ahmadinejad to his University and then went on to pile insults on him ... I am no fan of Ahmadinejad ... but I sincerely feel that if one invites a guest one should treat the guest in a civilized manner (if you hate someone to the limit of insulting - don't invite him in the first place) ... BBC showed the most insulting part of Bollinger's speech live ... makes me wonder if (and how much of) Ahmadinejad's speech was shown uncensored (I went to sleep after hearing Bollinger's part) ...

Reminds me of more crude behavior that I pointed out in my earlier post Saddam dead - Winners in West-Asia rejoice ... I don't expect the world to be free of crudeness ... infact crudeness adds spice to the world ... but I did expect the Presidents of a big university to be slightly better mannered

Thats all for this post ... will prolly write something when my PET Scan report comes out tomorrow.

7 comments:

Kholu said...

Ahmadinejad did give these guys an apt reply raised some very valid questions with regards to the palestine issue and a few other things all in all i sought of admired the man for the way he kept his cool.....and for being able to draw more than a couple of lines of applause from a mostly hostile audience

AID New York said...

dude...india has more muslims than pakistan...
and have to agree w/ you on bollinger...he did make an ass of himself...but then he had got threats from the NY state assembly that they might cut funding for
Columbia...so he had to pander to the (Republican) masses

bluesky said...

It was muslims that led to pakistans downfall. One started with hitting a 6 while opening and the other was man-of-the-match for his awesome bowling !!

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