Western Resistance

« World: Two Islamist Terror Anniversaries | | Somalia: Islamists Have Second Public Execution In Three Weeks »

October 14, 2006

Norway: Muslim Wins Nobel Peace Prize

There is always a political element to the Nobel Prizes, a fact even admitted by the BBC last year, when Harold Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. An erudite figure, who in his later years became phobic about all things American, Pinter writes turgid, prose laden plays, which lack the fundamental dynamic of a good play - drama.

And also last year, the Nobel Peace prize went to the Egyptian Muslim Mohammed ElBaradei. As head of IAEA, ElBaradei has been so indulgent in his treatment of Iran's illegal development of a nuclear weaponry program that he could be better described as an advocate of nuclear proliferation. ElBaradei has done NOTHING to help world peace.

So why are the decisions of the Nobel Prize Committee so quirky and tangential to the remit they purport to fulfill? The answer comes from the last will and testament of the initiator of the Nobel Prizes, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel. In his will, Alfred Nobel made the stipulation that his wealth would be used to fund prizes to those whose work benefited humanity. Nobel was wracked with guilt that his most successful product was being used to blow people to shreds.

But bizarrely, although a Swedish citizen, Nobel also stipulated that the Nobel Prize Committee should be chosen by the Norwegian government. The prizes were for the categories of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and for peace. An additional prize, for economics, was set up in 1968 after a bursary from the government of Sweden.

Nobel's unexplained choice of Norway's parliament as the body to select the panel of judges is the real reason for the sometimes kooky choices of the Nobel Prize Committee. Norway is not in the EU, but over the past decade, Norway's parliament has gone the extra mileage to become as PC and dhimmi-ridden as any parliament in Europe.

Only a European parliament could select arbitors who could award a lucklustre and negligent individual such as Mohammed ElBaradei to be awarded a Peace Prize. As the Nobel Peace Prize is the only peace prize to be issued by Norway, it is often seen as a matter of Norwegian political statement.

This year, the Peace Prize was awarded to a Muslim, Bangladeshi economist Mohammed Yunus (pictured), and the Literature Prize was awarded to another Muslim, the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk. The decision to award the Peace Prize to Mohammed Yunus has been roundly praised by the Norwegian political elite.

But though there may be doubts if Orhan Pamuk is chosen for his literature or for his politics, and suspicions that Yunus may have been better-suited to be awarded the Economics prize (which this year went to Edmund S Phelps of Columbia University in New York "for changing our perceptions of the tradeoffs between economic objectives") there is no doubt that Mohammed Yunus has actually followed the criteria laid out by Alfred Nobel.

Mohammed Yunus' pioneering economic scheme, the development of the Grameen Bank, has genuinely been "of the greatest benefit to mankind." His work has genuinely lifted millions of people out of the traps of perpetual poverty, and most importantly of all, the vast majority of recipients of his "microcredit" loan schemes have been women, usually ignored by banks in the developing world.

When I find out how Harold Pinter has "benefitted the world" other than benefitting the latte-drinking pseudo-intellectuals of Islington and his cronies at the BBC, I will tell you.

But in my researches over the past year at Western Resistance, tracking the rise of Islamist and government sponsoring of terror and corruption in Bangladesh, the name of Mohammed Yunus frequently came up, and I have been impressed.

In Bangladesh, where political corruption is endemic, government money is given to the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society (RIHS), a group designated by the US Treasury since 2002 as a sponsor of terorism, and since September similarly listed as such by Russia. In Bangladesh, where national banks such as the Bank Islami openly gave loans and accounts to leading figures in the terrorist group Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh, aware that these funds went on to pay for suicide bombings of courthouses and judges, Yunus' work is outstanding.

And what will be political about this decision is that, being a Muslim, he will be discussed and treated with pride in the Muslim world. And his Grameen Bank, which shared with him the Nobel Peace Prize, will be treated as something of pride in a Muslim world that has pitiably little to be proud about right now.

And the Grameen Bank charges interest, not some daft "interest-free" convoluted "Islamic Banking" such as that currently promoted by Malaysia and OIC and which is destined to fail. "Islamic Banking" has a poor track record. In Britain thousands of Muslims pulled their savings out of standard high street banks and invested in BCCI during the 1980s. This bank attracted them because it was "Islamic" not because it had a legitimate track record, or any legitimate ethical outlook. And worse still, to make money and stay in business, BCCI ended up breaking international law - supporting terrorism, drug money laundering, arms trafficking and other schemes. When it went to the wall in 1991, more than 6,500 British Muslims, and many more thousands around the globe lost vast sums of money.

Another factor makes the Grameen Bank interesting, should it become regarded as a source of pride for Muslims who traditionally treat women as chattels, whose legal value is worth half that of a man. 94% of the Grameen Bank's loans are given to women, and 98% of those who are loaned capital repay their debt, allowing them to set up schemes which make money and which can then be offered more loans. No collateral is required, but money can only be loaned to people who are selected to join a Grameen group, where their eligibility to make use of the loan is carefully studied. Branches of the Grameen Bank are located in villages, where its clients live.

The word "grameen" means "village" in Bangla. And as such it is succeeding, and is able to offer more loans. Unlike examples of Islamic banks, Grameen has grown from its first loan of $27, issued 23 years ago from Mohammed Yunus' own pocket, to be worth more than $2.5 billion. And in Bangladesh where it has 1.092 branches catering to 36,000 rural villages, it has helped 6.6 million impoverished women to escape the clutches of loan sharks, and has used capitalist principles to enhance the lives of the poor. The microcredit principle has been adopted by 58 countries. It even has 500 Grameen-based schemes in the US.

Dr Mohammed Yunus lives in Dhaka in a two bedroom apartment with his wife Afrozi, a physicist, and their daughter Deena. He was born in Chittagong, a financial hub of Bangladesh, on June 28, 1940.

In 1965, he won a Fullbright Fellowship to study at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, and gained his PhD. A year after Bangladesh gained its independence from Pakistan in 1971, he returned to his home country, where he became head of economics at Chittagong University.

The famine of 1974 affected him deeply, and he began a process of questioning how the poor made their livings. He found one case of a woman who had no capital, and had to repay 93% of her proceeds from making bamboo stools to the person who loaned her money. He saw the problem of the poor as a problem of "structure", and based on this realization, in 1983 he launched the Grameen Bank.

This is how he himself describes the principles of Grameencredit:

For more information, see: Dr Yunus' profile - Daily Star, Bangaladesh's Reaction, Yunus' reaction, and Grameen Bank's success. The preceding links are from the Daily Star, and Aftenposten's account is here.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at October 14, 2006 2:15 AM

Comments

Posted by: JordanR at October 14, 2006 4:53 AM

Post a comment