Most Maldivians are by now familiar with the drama unfolding in Makunudhoo. It has been on the news a lot and has been blogged about a lot but photos haven't been very forthcoming - well, except for a blurred image on Haveeru Daily and a photo stolen from my Flickr stream published on Miadhu News. So here are some images of the historic Makunudhoo School where Man and Jinn live side by side and study side by side, though not always in harmony as has been revealed. The school may replace the island's currently most famous landmark: the residential ruins of the infamous Bodufenvalhugey Seedhee (known for various supposed supernatural feats such as "walking on water" between islands, "helping" the infertile conceive etc) including its "teleportation well".

And yes, in case you wonder, it is ridiculous to believe this is a battle between invisible Jinn and humans, especially when there are good explanations.

Enjoy... stand awed.

Yesterday, I called up a friend in Makunudhoo who is pretty familiar with the mass hysteria (or jinn possession, depending who you ask) that has gripped the students of the island's school for the past month to have a little chat about the events taking place there. Some of the events, including the digging of the school grounds, are missing from here because we had talked about it an earlier conversation which I sadly didn't record. I am posting a transcript of the later conversation here (with permission). It is a translation from Dhivehi ofcourse but I've avoided doing the sort of fancy rephrasing and rearranging that is advocated in Dhivehi translation classes in the hopes of preserving the original as much as possible. The bits inside brackets were added by me to help make subjects and contexts clearer.

-----
Me: Hey, this is Jaa. You busy?
ZZ: No. No. Excellent time.
Me: I just wanted to get some more details on what's happening in the island. I am hoping to write it up on my blog.
ZZ: Great. Go ahead.
Me: Can you tell me how this happened. Did it happen to many at once or was it just one kid?
ZZ: It was one kid at first. It was about a year ago.
Me: Is it! How does that relate to this event?
ZZ: It happens to this kid every now and then. But it got so serious only this month.
Me: So the kid has fits? Regularly?
ZZ: Yes. There are about 3 or 4 kids in the school that gets fits.
Me: So what happened this time?
ZZ: What happened this time was that one of the kids got possessed, by Jinn. Following that, a boy in Grade 10 said it was happening because of a tree in the school. He said he was going to hit the tree with a ball and went ahead to kick a ball into the tree. When he did that the ball is said to have hit the hand/fingers of a Jinn child and broke it. The boy fell unconscious immediately following that.
Me: I see.
ZZ: The boy's hands were contorted as well.
Me: Uhuh. So that was the first two kids?
ZZ: Those two escalated the situation. There are a total of about 6... err 10, 12 kids now. 10-12 have been admitted sick now.
Me: I see. The kid that this first happened to... you say it's regular... Had a doctor been consulted earlier?
ZZ: They went to a doctor even the first time. They didn't call it a Jinn event then, it was diagnosed as fits then. It is only now this became a Jinn possession. So many kids had fallen sick at the same time so it wasn't believed to be fits.
Me: Newspapers made it seem that this happened to a lot of kids, at the same time. Did it happen that way or was it gradual... one by one... a few at a time?
ZZ: No no. This school is 40 years old. And in this 40 years, about every year or every six months a kid would fall sick. That is fall during assembly. Whether that's because of fainting or something else, it's not known. But since talking to the Jinn (by the fanditha/blackmagic practitioners), it has appeared that the school is also attended by 1000 Jinn children. And that the Jinn parents number to 300,000...
Me: Uhuh
ZZ: And that their kids are not as good at studies as us Dhivehi, us humans. They are taking revenge because they haven't been improving and also because when our kids play ball during assembly, err PE, the ball hits their kids.
Me: How did this spread to other kids?
ZZ: Apparently the Jinns have made a list... those Jinns. So all kids on the list are to get sick and it's been happening that way.
Me: So the first day this happened, a lot of kids fell sick and the second day more kids fell? Is that how it happened?
ZZ: Yes that is how it happened this week... this month.
Me: I see.
ZZ: Yea.
Me: Has any of the kids gotten better?
ZZ: No. None of the kids have gotten better.
Me: But the fanditha is still going on?
ZZ: The fanditha is proceeding very strong. They have now put 150 Jinns into a can and sunk them into the sea... the fanditha men have said.
Me: I see.
ZZ: A psychologist came to the island last night. The psychologist assessed the kids and said it wasn't related to Jinns. But the parents didn't believe that. They say it was caused by Jinns and no treatment by the psychologist will treat that.
Me: I see.
ZZ: So the psychologist had to leave (the island) immediately.
Me: Hehe. I see. Umm. Is there any news if any sort of change, like that of odour, was noticed in the area?
ZZ: This is happening not because of a change in odour. There are no smells. There were a number of trees. Even the affected sick children are saying that something lives in those trees and they see it as their land. So when the tree was cut, those Jinns got furious and many more children fell sick.
Me: But wasn't the tree felled recently?
ZZ: Yes. Things got this bad when the tree was felled.
Me: I see. But why did the tree have to be felled? Didn't one of the kids say things would get better once the tree is felled?
ZZ: No no. Not that because it would release the kids. It was done with the intent of sending the Jinn off. It was assumed that they wouldn't stay there once their home was destroyed and so when the parents requested for the tree to be felled it was done so.
Me: Uhuh.
ZZ: Now the Jinns have moved to the largest "nika" tree in the island.
Me: So how far has the fanditha proceeded? How long is it to take?
ZZ: It is going on full speed. They had a 40 man chanting last night and they are going to do chants tonight too. He (the fanditha practitioner) says he doesn't want to "cure" the kids just yet because he still needs to question the Jinn over certain things. He assures though that he is going to leave only once he "cures" the kids.
Me: Did he say how long he is going to take?
ZZ: He hasn't given a date yet.
Me: So hopefully the Jinns would go away soon? To a nearby island.
ZZ: (Laugh) People have asked for the Jinns to be sent off to another island.
Me: How about the two near uninhabited islands?
ZZ: Not those two islands. People have requested the Jinns to be expelled from the island, to make it so that they are unable to enter the school. People would like a (magic) barrier to be placed around the island to prevent the Jinns from coming in. The fanditha men has now created the wall around around and they have expelled around 300,000 Jinns from out the wall. They say that only a few infidel crippled Jinn remain now.
...
Me: Thanks!
--------

I made a short post earlier about this incident in Makunudhoo and linked to a few interesting research papers related to mass hysteria in hopes of putting things into a more scientific perspective. MaldivesHealth has since posted on the amusing case of the genitalia vanishing epidemic in Nigeria and more. It maybe true that it really are the Jinns that are at the root of the problem Makunudhoo is facing, yet centuries of (global) experience and amassed knowledge tells us that it is far far far more likely to be a ...

This whole throwing fits and going berserk business in the Makunudhoo School is becoming utterly ridiculous. It has been a month since it was first reported and apparently things have now escalated into becoming a full-on circus complete with clowns and flying elephants. More kids are apparently joining the madness by the day while the health authorities and the government at large seems to have ignored it for the most part.

The fanditha men who are being imported into the island by the worried parents to bring an end to this "supernatural" problem are probably having the time of their life. It is absolutely mad that in this day in age, people could forgo rationality and scientific understanding to attempt to solve the afflictions by letting fanditha practitioners chant and perform silly rituals around an island and go about cutting down trees in the belief that they harbour Jinns. The mentality of attributing anything even slightly mysterious or unexplainable as something within a supernatural realm is self-defeating, non-explanatory and should have been left behind in the past centuries of ignorance. I find it especially amusing that these Jinns always seem to have a knack for stirring a total ruckus in human societies by engaging in petty, retarded behaviour like taking "possession" of a person for "revenge". Then again, all non-existent imaginary constructs have their own unique quirks.

Edit (17/05/2008):
Jinns are mythical creatures lacking evidence and scientific validation. This fact should not be taken lightly because:
a) the role of such a priori beliefs in making people susceptible to and triggering hysteria has been noted in research,
b) the "treatment" being pushed by fanditha men and priests/imams involves reinforcement of those very beliefs that set it off and that has been noted to enhance the outbreaks.
c) the immediate attribution to illnesses to the supernatural delays/avoids proper medical diagnosis in favour of meaningless rituals, which is especially worrying if the illness were to be due to or a symptom of a serious medical condition.

Edit (11/05/2008):
Some interesting papers on the matter:-
- Episodic Neurological Dysfunction Due to Mass Hysteria
- Epidemic Hysteria: A review of the Published Literature
- Possession "hysteria" in a Kenya Tribe

The following goes out to the elderly and all those who aren't versed in English, to all those who are disadvantaged by the sorry state of science in Dhivehi and to all those who were misinformed and deceived. Hope this helps.

(Download the article as a PDF formatted for print)

I woke up this morning to find in my email inbox a scan of a document titled "Miureekhah Hulhagun Iru Araifi" (translated: "The Sun rose from the West in Mars"), authored by someone operating under the name of "Abu Osama" and bearing the stamp of approval by the Islaamee Kathakaa Behey Mathee Majlis (pages 1 2 3). I assumed that it was just a chain-mail doing the rounds and went off to run a few errands only to return in the evening to find yet another email in my inbox - this time from a close buddy who had spotted the (same!) article appearing in today's issue of Haveeru Daily (view clipping). It was then that I realized that the document I read earlier was a serious piece of literature produced by someone, or some religious entity, as part of organised religious evangelism.

The document was shock full of factual errors and scientific errors that I just had to take it seriously - especially since these very "errors" acted as the basis for their evangelical argument. Could they have been so scientifically illiterate?! This whole story of the Sun rising from the West and the supposed evidence for it by events on Mars is just ludicrous. I'd laugh my belly off if I weren't so worried about the sheer lack of scientific understanding and the lack of skepticism. Anyway, I'd like to go over the document in question and set the science straight...

Claims in the document
The basic claim in the "Miureekhah Hulhagun Iru Araifi" article is that [1] the planet Mars had slowed down in its trek around the Sun, [2] came to a complete stop on 30th July 2005 and then [3] resumed its trek around the sun - [4] in the opposite direction - [5] in August/September 2005. The document attributes these observations to "Retrograde motion". The document also claims that [6] this encounter meant that the Sun had started to rise from the West on Mars instead of the usual East. It further claims that [7] the same would happen to Earth someday. They then interject a Hadith that claims the Sun rising from the West as being a sign that the end is near and that once it happens no one could repent or achieve salvation. The document also claims, on the authority of religious scholars, that [8] the Sun would rise in the West on Earth once only - for one day only - and things would continue as normal thereafter.

The document then uses these claims as a premise to attempt validate, justify and promote a number of Hadith regarding the end of the world and judgement day to call upon people to stay steadfast to Islam, to repent and to call upon non-believers to the faith.

The document then gives an invalid URL to an article on space.com in an attempt to create a smokesreen to make it look more credible.

Analysis and Explanations
It is important to note that the article presents an incorrect definition of what a "Retrograde" really is. A planetary body is in retrograde motion when it moves in a direction dissimilar, i.e. opposite, to another planetary body within a system. The problem at hand deals with a specific type of retrograde motion that occurs when the motion of planets is viewed relative to the Earth - known as an Apparent Retrograde - and is applicable to all planets that lie beyond Earth in the Solar System: Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Perhaps the best way to understand and help imagine the interactions betweens the planets involved in retrogrades is to watch the simulation available here. Run the simulation on that page and watch carefully how the movement of Earth and Mars in their own elliptical paths results in changes in what we see in the sky - with such amazing things as Mars apparently slowing down, stopping entirely, changing direction and then resuming as normal. They say a picture is worth a thousand words but I tell you, this simulation is invaluable. It is important to recognize that these "Mars retrograde" events are cyclical events that occur once every 26 months and has been taking place since before the earliest humans.

- The article's false claim [1] thus acquires a whole new meaning - it is the apparent behaviour of Mars that we see that is actually slowing down and not Mars itself.
- The dates given in claims [2] and [5] are false - in the 2003 Mars retrograde, Mars reached the first stationary point on 30th July, went through the loop back and reversed direction after reaching the stationary point on 29 September. In the 2005 Mars retrograde, Mars reached the first stationary point around 1 October and went through the loopback till it reached the second stationary point on 10 December and reversed direction again. A nice sketch of the movement of Mars, including the key dates, for both these years is available here.
- As said before, even during a retrograde, despite how we perceive it, Mars never actually stops or moves in any special way other than its usual motion along the elliptic orbit around the sun - thus claims [2], [3] and [4] are false if taken in the literal sense.
- Since Mars never budges from its usual orbit path nor its usual rotation direction, unlike as claimed in [6], there never is even a moment of time that the Sun rises from the West in Mars. The Martian sunrise and sunsets continue as they have been doing for the billions of years it has been in existence.
- The article quite correctly quotes scientists as saying that the retrograde happens for all planets. But the quote is placed out of context amongst the article's drive toward making it seem that Mars switched directions and had the Sun rise from its West. Truth of the matter is that scientists are actually referring to the planets other than Mars that are also affected by Apparent Retrogrades - ie Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune - and does not include Earth in it. However, since Apparent Retrogrades depend on the position of the viewer, Earth would also be subject to the sort of retrograde illusions as Mars if we were to observe things from Venus or Mercury and there'd come a time every year when Earth retrogrades and the entire Earth would seem to wobble a bit as it scurries backward and then forward again. But when talking with respect to Earth, claims [7] and [8] just fall flat.

It is worth noting that one of the main tasks of the article seems to be to suggest that this is a one off event that demands our immediate attention. However, this seems absurd a suggestion given that Mars retrogrades are cyclical events that have even been documented carefully by ancient Greeks and the Mayans and that a good part of humanity has known, predicted and observed it for centuries. What more, we are currently right in the middle of such a retrograde - Mars reached its first stationary point on 15 November 2007 and has been trekking through the loopback all of December and will continue to do so for the entire January till it reaches its second stationary point on 30 January 2008.

Scientifically, there's absolutely no reason to think that Earth will change its direction of rotation or direction of orbit around the sun - hence the direction of the Sun rise - EVER! The angular momentum of earth's current spin would keep the Earth turning the way it does now until opposing forces slow it down to a complete standstill - which happens to be millions of years away. The only scenario where the Earth MIGHT change its direction of rotation is if a there is a collision with a very (very!!) large foreign object such as a very large meteor and that too only under particular conditions that depend heavily on the location of impact and speed of the object - but this act would almost certainly wipe out every single living thing on Earth and so there'd be no point to this issue of Sun rising from West. Another occasion that might allow for the Sun to rise from West - if all you have is a compass - is if the Earth flips the polarity of its magnetic field. The Earth could and IS presently slowly changing its magnetic polarization - so if/when a polarity flip occurs, what is currently shown as "West" on a magnetic compass would then register as "East". But the cardinal directions are NOT defined by the Earth's magnetic field and the Sun would still continue to rise from the same direction it has always risen - the only thing that would have then changed would probably be the compasses to make up for the switch in pole polarity.

After thoughts
I hope the above deconstructs the myth/hoax published in Haveeru and popularised in Male'. It is sad to see that people, especially with the blessings of the Islaamee Kanthakaa Behey Mathee Majlis, engage in fear-mongering and scare tactics to psychologically intimidate people into religion. Surely there are more honest means than this?

Mars has been the subject of many other hoaxes recently and it seems to be able to consistently dupe a lot of people. It is easy to be duped and had for unless one practices healthy skepticism and read up. Meanwhile, go out and have a look at Mars shining bright in the sky - that's what I was doing with a telescope during the 2003 Mars retrograde when the red planet was supposed to be the closest to Earth it will be for years and years to come...

PS: By all means, feel free to send this article to your friends who've been taken in by the hoax.



UPDATE (25/01/2007): It seems the exact same hoax article was also disseminated by the Maldivian Islamic political party Adaalath Party on on their website. Sigh.

I've been meaning to post this interesting presentation by Dan Dennet which I got reminded of after reading the debates and news that followed the recent bombing in the Maldives.

Daniel Dennett is a very prominent philosopher with research centering on the very interesting areas of philosophy of mind and philosophy of science. If you study anything to do with cognition, be it philosophy or psychology or (like me) artificial intelligence, then you are sure to have come across his papers and ideas.

This presentation comes from TED Talks (2002) and is titled "Ants, terrorism, and the awesome power of memes". Many of you will disagree with it outright but the concepts he presents are, to me atleast, pretty powerful and food for thought in light of the bombing and the events that keep unfolding since. Check it out below...

I was rummaging through the locally revered magazine called "Dharuma" for a friend when a series of articles written by a Dr. Mauroof Hussain titled "Evolution Theory: Mulhidhunge Bahana" (translated into english as "Evolution Theory: Atheists' Excuse") caught my eye. This was interesting because Dharuma magazine has supposedly caught a particular following of readers with its team of "high profile" writers, religious teachers and allegedly educational content.

Anyway, as someone who reads dhivehi magazines only rarely, I would have had no idea what sort of arguments the article might contain were it no for the title that clearly sets the stage - this was going to be creationist ramblings. Nonetheless, I bit my tongue and read through it, reading some bits twice just to make sure I read it correctly. The article surely had a load of surprises in store and by the time I was finished reading it I was beyond speechless - the author had managed to write complete, thorough, mindless, fallacious bullshit from the very start till the very end. I encourage you all to read this "brilliant" piece, it would teach you a thing or two about making a case without really making a case, how to obfuscate, how to commit a dozen logical fallacies and still have it all fit for publishing in a magazine. If this were an intentional hoax then it surely would make Sokal blush.

The article starts off with "arguments" (attempting) to associate evolution with every sort of demonic, evil manifestation imaginable - especially to the ultra-conservative Islamic mind. Materialism, Marxism, communism, racism and atheism are served for starters as well as a claim from the outset that the theory really is devil's incarnate and no less than his greatest creation ever! The author then drops names of scientists/thinkers/inventors no less luminous than da Vinci, Galileo, Newton and Einstein themselves as having expressed belief in the existence of Allah. Many of you should know how outrageous a claim this is - I, and probably much of the rest of the world, would challenge the author to explain and show supporting evidence. First of all, philosophically speaking, it doesn't matter what who-and-who believed as it has absolutely no bearing on the truth values of those beliefs in question. However, the biggest problem with this claim regarding the belief of those scientists is the sheer dishonesty of this claim :- da Vinci, Galileo and Newton were all Christians (infact Newtons is well known to have been an extremely religious Bible believer) and Einstein was a deist/agnost. The Einstein quote "science without religion is lame and religion without science is BLIND" when read in the full context of his essay makes clear, very well, what he means by religion and what he means by a God or more precisely what he discredits as being false Gods and religions. The quote appears in his essay "Science and Religion" and is a must (short!) read for anyone who is remotely interested in Einsteins views on the relationship between science and religion - I really recommend reading it.

Anyway, the author finally finds space for dispensing something about the theory itself. Anyone with even a mild knowledge of proper evolutionary theory and its workings would just stare at the garbage inked cheerfully by the doctor. It must be said that the author fails miserably at defining what evolution theory entails. Unlike what's said in the article, evolution theory does NOT include postulations on how life arose - evolution stands independent of abiogenesis and "origin of life" theories. The article also states that evolution theory claims white supremacy but again there is no such thing inherent in evolution theory. Rather, it has to be acknowledged that Darwin indeed held racist views (very much in accordance with the then contemporary views) and did denigrate Africans. However, it would be a logical fallacy to discredit evolution theory on this basis since, again as I mentioned above, a particular person's individual views are irrelevant to the truth evaluation of a claim. I hope I can skip giving analogies to make it clearer as to why this is a such an easy argument to make and why its fallacious...

The article continues on with a hogwash of standard Creationist and/or Intelligent Design objections with arguments such as irreducible complexity, apparent design, purported perfection of creation and (current) holes in the fossil record. I'm too sleepy right now to iterate them all here but I'm sure anyone curious to know the other side of these arguments (and their answers) can find them bundled up in short neat sections at the "Objections to evolution" page on Wikipedia. Stand assured that the explanations you may read may lead to the elucidation of the false assertions made by the author, who seems to hint that humans walked and lived safely among bands of animals upto 60ft tall, 60lb heavy ferocious carnivorous animals we call dinosaurs and had been around unchanged since the Jurassic years.

Science is an evidence based enterprise that aspires to explain the world - it is not biased towards nor is hostile to any particular religion. It does not care whether its findings and theories conform to a particular preconceived framework for understanding and interpreting nature - for its goal is to build, refine and distil the best explanation of the universe and everything in it. Arguments such as the gaps in the fossil record mentioned in the article do nothing more than state a half-truth. There is no explanatory power in the creationist argument since all it does is say "God did it". Most amusingly, these particular people seem to be incapable of perceiving a God powerful enough to create a beautiful process as evolution to power the biological processes in the world just as the physical processes (or laws) govern motion, flight etc. It must be said that there are Muslims, Christians and Jews all of whom are pious and steadfast in their beliefs yet see no conflict with science and evolution - their interpretation and understanding allow for a God who creates magnificent mechanisms to drive the world without constant meddling by God himself...

After reading the article(s) in question, I was agitated enough to say something (thus the blog post!) about these sort of mindless crap being granted the authority to be published and spread without the freedom for countering arguments. I wish I am able to articulate better in Dhivehi so that I could myself write an article to respond to these sort of advocates of mysticism. I hope atleast some of you would think twice after reading articles in Dharuma and ignore the pseudoscience it packages to be passed off as modern science. It is always a delight to realize the true essences of science, the power of the scientific method and start re-learning and replacing strict ancient mysticism for a better, brighter life of knowledge and understanding. May God grant all those who aspire for such understanding the means and the will to do so.

Note (05/July/2007): My support for evolution theory does not imply anything more than just that and my criticisms of the article in question do not constitute of an attempt to support religious disbelief as some assume. I am compelled take issue with these sort of articles and ideas because it (in my view) presents bad science, incorrect information and is heavily tainted with the particular interpretation of holy books by its authors which they want to pass off as the ultimate truth. Any of you who bother to do further read up on its claims will find the extents to which most of its facts and arguments have been misquotes, misinformation and misappropriations - my post highlights a few of the more blatant ones. Such dishonesty seems to be indicative of an attempt to discredit a scientific theory that is well respected and accepted as the cornerstone in many areas of research. My goal in criticizing the Dharuma article certainly did not constitute of an attack on religion or religious belief but rather is an honest attempt to promote good science and critical thought.