Features

Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain, 1492-1614
Matthew Carr
London: Hurst and Company, 2017
Pp. 427

One tends to associate the end of Muslim Spain with the fall of Granada in 1492, but Matthew Carr focuses on the ensuing century which climaxed in the years, 1609-1614, with the expulsion of more than 350,000 men, women and children known as Moriscos.

These descendants of the Muslims who conquered Spain in 711, had converted to Christianity decades earlier, but still did not conform to the rigid demands of Catholic Spain’s rulers, at a time when the Inquisition was in full force. “Blood and Faith” investigates the causes and consequences of “what was then the largest removal of a civilian population in European history, even larger than Spain’s previous expulsion of the Jews… the tragedy of the Moriscos was part of a recurring dynamic that has been repeated in many other contexts, in which a powerful majority seeks to remake or define its own identity through the physical elimination or removal of supposedly incompatible minorities, whose presence is imagined as potentially defiling or corrupting”. (pp. 1, 3)

Carr compares the Moriscos’ expulsion to modern examples of ethnic cleansing — of Native Americans, Armenians, the Holocaust, the population exchanges when India and Pakistan were created, the Palestinian exodus in 1948, and the Yugoslav civil wars. Most urgently, he finds parallels to today: “At a time when Europe’s Muslim minorities and Islam itself are seen as a threat to Europe’s cultural and political identity and even as the antithesis of a certain notion of European civilization, it seemed to me potentially useful and instructive to examine how and why the rulers of Catholic Spain destroyed the last vestiges of Islam in Iberia.” (p. ix)

Thus, Carr links this book to his other recent one: “Fortress Europe: Inside the War Against Immigration” (Hurst, 2015).

The book chronicles the debates about how to deal with the Moriscos, which raged in Spain’s Catholic and royal circles for over a century. It also elucidates the socioeconomic conditions prevailing at the time, which coincided with Spain’s rise to be the dominant colonial power and its ambition to rule a united, transnational Catholic kingdom. Spurred on by religious and cultural bigotry, Spain’s rulers debated whether it was enough to convert the Moriscos, whether they should be assimilated or separated from Christian society, expelled from the country, or even exterminated.

Repression of a suspect minority went hand-in-hand with colonial conquest: “as Cortes completed his subjugation of Aztec Mexico in the name of the faith, bands of militiamen conducted their class war cum religious crusade in the Valencian countryside, killing, robbing, and converting Muslims and consecrating their mosques as churches”. (p. 106)

Spain’s concurrent wars with Protestant Europe and the Ottoman Empire made the Moriscos’ status even more perilous, for they were suspected of collaborating with external enemies, and their loyalty questioned. 

Along with Islam and learning, the Moors had brought new crops to Spain — sugar, rice, oranges, lemons, silk and coffee. The invigorated agricultural sector, plus expanded trade, laid the foundation for a prosperous, relatively stable and tolerant, multicultural society. “At a time when the largest library in Christian Europe was no more than six hundred volumes, a cottage industry of Arabic calligraphers in Cordoba was churning out some 60,000 handwritten books every year.” (p. 10)

Though Spain’s rulers had little regard for the Arabic language or the rich hybrid culture created in Andalusia, they were concerned about prosperity. The predominance of Moriscos in the agricultural labour force figured heavily into the debates, repeatedly delaying the expulsion decision, as Spanish landowners were opposed. Indeed, after the expulsion, fields and orchards lay fallow in many places — one of several examples cited in the book that the expulsion did not actually benefit Spain.

Besides the sweeping panorama of a critical historical period that Carr provides, his approach reminds that the course of history is not black-and-white; there are always exceptions. Not all Christians had a negative view of Muslims, or vice versa; in times of danger, some Christians protected Muslims, and vice versa. Perhaps the hardest phenomenon to make generalisations about is the attitude of the Moriscos who were coerced into being Christians and hounded into adopting European dress and customs and “forgetting” Arabic. While some became sincere Christians, it is doubtful that the majority did. “Long after their initial conversions, many Moriscos continued to inhabit a parallel Islamic world beneath a façade of Christianity.” (p. 133) 

Per definition, it is not possible to know how many continued to practice their Muslim faith in secret, for if discovered, they were brought before the Inquisition courts and subject to severe punishments, including being burned at the stake. And that is beside the point; Spain is the only home they had known, and they had been productive members of society.

Carr’s account is a powerful warning of the perils of intolerance of difference and of policies of forced conversion and assimilation. Besides destroying the truth, such policies destroyed many lives and communities, while the subsequent expulsions caused untold death, sickness, impoverishment and separation of families. As the author concludes: “Four hundred years later, the destruction of the Moriscos is an example of what can happen when a society succumbs to its worst instincts and its worst fears in an attempt to cast out its imaginary devils.” (p. 375)

It is the inescapable 21st-century vexation of the vain. Smartphones allow a person to take selfies as fast as the index finger can click, yet from a dismayingly close distance that may leave the subject dissatisfied.

Do not fret, a team of researchers from Rutgers and Stanford says in a recent published analysis. The culprit is distortion.

Using a mathematical model, the group found that in a selfie taken from 30 centimetres away, the nose appears 30 per cent wider than in a photo taken from 1.5 metres.

The researchers undertook the analysis because plastic-surgery patients — who spent more than $16 billion on cosmetic procedures in 2016, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons — often cited their appearance in selfies as justification for getting a nose job.

Boris Paskhover, an assistant professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School’s department of otolaryngology, wanted to set the record straight.

“Young adults are constantly taking selfies to post to social media and think those images are representative of how they really look, which can have an impact on their emotional state,” Paskhover said in a Rutgers news release. “I want them to realise that when they take a selfie, they are in essence looking into a portable funhouse mirror.”

To calculate the degree of nasal distortion in up-close photos, Paskhover worked with Ohad Fried, a research fellow in Stanford’s computer science department. In addition to the 30 per cent increase in the apparent width of the nose in selfies, the team also found that the close vantage point made the tip of the nose appear 7 per cent wider.

Their findings were published in JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery.

LOS ANGELES — Animated “The Emoji Movie” stunk up the annual Razzie Awards on Saturday, tanking below all contenders for worst achievements in film, while Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson were also roasted for 2017’s most ignoble performances.

In its 38th year, the Razzies serves as a tongue-in-cheek response to the Sunday’s Academy Awards by handing out $4.97 gold spray-painted berry trophies.

“The Emoji Movie”, Sony Pictures children’s film about talking emoticons, earned four Golden Raspberries, including worst picture, director and screenplay.

“The Emoji Movie” received Hollywood’s most famous frown, the Razzie Award, for worst picture of 2017, making it the first animated feature to earn the top dishonour.

“Leading this year’s list of movie-misfires is the emoticon-based, talking poop opus,” the Razzies said in a statement announcing the recipients, saying the film came in a year when “Hollywood’s recycled trash heap attained an all-time high” and saw a “toxic-level lack of originality”.

The annual awards bestowed on the worst the movie business has to offer were announced on Saturday in their traditional spot, the day before the Academy Awards.

“The Emoji Movie” landed four of the 10 Razzies given out this year, also taking worst screenplay, worst director, and worst screen combo, which was given to “any two obnoxious emojis” from the movie.

Cruise won worst actor for his leading role as a US army sergeant who accidentally unleashes mayhem by disturbing an ancient grave in the much-maligned action reboot “The Mummy”. 

He now has no Oscars after three nominations, but two Razzies.

Cruise and Brad Pitt won for worst screen couple for 1994’s “Interview with the Vampire”.

Gibson was bestowed the worst supporting actor for his comedic turn in “Daddy’s Home 2” alongside John Lithgow, Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg.

Tyler Perry, a perennial Razzie punching bag, took home the worst actress raspberry for his popular drag character Madea in “Boo 2: A Medea Halloween”.

Oscar-winning actress Kim Basinger earned the Razzie dishonour for her supporting role in erotic romance “Fifty Shades Darker”, while the big screen adaptation of TV series “Baywatch” won the fan-voted award of “nominee so bad you loved it!”

“Baywatch”, won the inaugural “Special Rotten Tomatoes Award: The Razzie Nominee So Bad You Loved It!” The award is the result of an online poll held in conjunction with the review site Rotten Tomatoes.

The Razzies are chosen by more than 1,000 voting members from more than 26 countries, organisers said.

The retail revolution shifting sales from stores to laptops to smartphones could be on the verge of its next sea change—when shoppers will ask Amazon’s Alexa, and other voice-driven speakers, to order just about, well, everything.

Purchases made through devices like Google Home and Amazon’s Echo are projected to leap from $2 billion today to $40 billion by 2022, as technology improves, US consumers become more comfortable, and the speakers become nearly as commonplace in homes as a flat-screen TV, according to a new study from OC&C Strategy Consultants.

“We really see this as the next big disruptive play in US retail,’’ says John Franklin, associate partner at OC&C which surveyed 1,500 smart speaker owners in December .

The smart speaker space is one that many tech giants want to play in. Though Amazon and its digital helper Alexa have come to define the niche, Google Home with its Google Assistant is second in popularity. Apple began shipping its Siri-assisted HomePod smart speaker in February. Microsoft’s “Cortana” is also part of the mix.

For now, the most popular use of voice-driven speakers is to play music or find out whether to take an umbrella when heading out the front door, OC&C says.

But with virtual assistants that can turn up a thermostat and even rattle off jokes, voice-driven speakers are at the centre of a budding universe of artificial intelligence connected devices that include bathroom mirrors, door locks, and TV monitors. Smart home product sales are expected to total $4.5 billion this year, up 34 per cent from 2017, according to The Consumer Technology Association.

Among the US residents who have a smart speaker, 62 per cent have used it to buy groceries or some other item, according to OC&C’s study. And the report predicts that the percentage of US homes with a smart speaker will rise from the current 13 per cent to 55 per cent by 2022.

“That number has been going up incredibly rapidly over the last two years,’’ Franklin says. “That’s clearly a big driver in the overall potential in voice shopping. We then expect household spend with smart speakers will increase also.’’

Amazon is still king

Amazon, which first upended the retail environment when it wooed readers away from traditional book stores, then became the go-to for many online shoppers interested in items ranging from toys to tools, now dominates the emerging smart speaker space as well.

The Amazon Echo is used in 10 per cent of US households, followed by Google, which is in 4 per cent of US homes, and Microsoft’s Cortana which comes in at 2 per cent.

Amazon’s strength should give other retailers pause, Franklin says.

“Retailers should be taking notice of this primarily because of the way Amazon is pushing this technology and the potential Amazon has to access consumers on a regular basis and in a very intimate way,’’ he says.

But Google is pushing back. With visitors increasingly starting their browsing on Amazon instead of Google, the world’s largest search engine has been linking up with a range of retailers including Whole Foods, Costco and Walmart, whose items are available through its shopping and delivery service Google Express.

With Express, customers can place orders through Google Home as well as on the Google Express website and app.

Voice shopping faces obstacles

Still, there are hurdles that could slow down how quickly shoppers take to voice shopping— and how lucrative voice-based purchases are for retailers.

Currently, it can be difficult to compare prices when ordering via speaker and customers often have to use specific wording like “Ok Google’’ when launching their transactions.

For retailers, OC&C found that the tally from voice orders is not typically as high as purchases made online, with shoppers more apt to buy cheaper items like phone charger cables via voice, than a high-priced appliance. The average online basket was $661 for online purchases of electronics, as compared to $239 for voice orders, OC&C said.

Then, there is the matter of trust. Among shoppers who are not currently making purchases through a smart speaker, only 45 per cent trust that the device would recommend the best reviewed products.

But among those who do shop via voice, 83 per cent say they have confidence in the virtual assistant’s suggestions — signalling that once consumers try the new way of summoning goods and services, they often like it.

Those numbers give “us confidence this isn’t simply a fad, but is a meaningful channel that will continue to disrupt retail over the next five years and beyond’”, Franklin says.

BARCELONA — Samsung unveiled its new flagship smartphone earlier in the week with a focus on augmented reality features as it seeks to keep its title as the world’s biggest smartphone maker.

The South Korean firm showcased the Galaxy S9 on the eve of the official start of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which comes after a year of flat smartphone sales.

With no other major handset maker using the annual event, the world’s largest phone show, to launch a new flagship device this year, Samsung had the opportunity to grab the spotlight.

The S9 features essentially the same design as last year’s previous flagship, with the full screen and curved glass edge of the S8, which was followed by Apple’s iPhone X and others.

Samsung also launched the S9 Plus at a price of 997 euros.

But it includes a louder sound, a faster processor and software that turns selfies into animated emojis, which will appeal to consumers who are increasingly preferring to use their phones to send text messages rather than talking.

Samsung also included a dual lense camera on the Galaxy S line for the first time, which will improve low-light capture and enhance slow motion video, which is popular on social media.

A service powered by artificial intelligence allows users to point its camera to instantly translate a sign in a foreign language.

It is also one of the few flagship phones left that still comes with a standard headphone jack.

“Despite these incremental innovations, Samsung will have to smartly leverage its brand and marketing machine to correctly position the new smartphones to a target audience,” said Forrester analyst Thomas Husson.

Global smartphone sales fell by 6.3 per cent in the fourth quarter due to slower than expected Christmas sales, according to research firm IDC.

Overall global smartphone sales for 2017 were virtually flat — down 0.1 per cent at 1.47 billion units — as phone makers struggled to come up with innovations that encourage customers to upgrade their devices.

Samsung suffered a humiliating recall of its Galaxy Note 7 device in 2016 after several devices exploded, but its Galaxy 8 smartphone was a consumer and critical success.

While it kept its lead over Apple as the world’s biggest seller of smartphones in 2017 with a 21.6 per cent market share, up from 21.1 per cent in the previous year, Samsung faces stiffer competition from Chinese rivals like Huawei and Xiaomi that offer cheaper handsets with many high-end features.

The S9 will sell for 841 euros, a price which analysts warned could turn off many consumers.

While the S9’s camera is “markedly different” in quality from older smartphones that people already own “consumers may delay purchase because of rising flagship prices”, IHS Markit said in a research note.

“Samsung must work hard to market the benefits of these designs to counter negative pricing perception.”

At least one in four teens are receiving sexually explicit texts and e-mails, and at least one in seven are sending sexts, a new study suggests. 

Sexting can be a healthy way for young people to explore sexuality and intimacy when it is consensual, said lead study author Sheri Madigan of the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute and the University of Calgary in Canada. The trouble is that when it is coerced, or when sexts are shared without permission, it can feel a lot like cyberbullying, with many of the same dangerous mental health consequences. 

More than one in 10 teens are forwarding these sexts without consent, the study found. And roughly one in 12 teens have had sexts they sent shared without their permission. 

“Today’s teens often do not separate their online and offline lives — it is all the same to them,” Madigan said by e-mail. “This is hard for parents to grasp.” 

Most teens do not report sexting at all, and those who do send or receive sexually explicit messages, videos or images tend to be older, researchers report in JAMA Paediatrics.

Researchers examined data on sexting habits from 39 previously published studies with a total of 110,380 teens. Participants were 15 years old on average, although they ranged in age from about 12 to 17. 

Because kids today typically have a smartphone by the time they are 10 years old, parents should address sexting as part of any early conversations they have with kids about practising safe sex and protecting their privacy online, Madigan advised. 

“It can be helpful for parents to think about sexting in the same way they think about sex,” said Elizabeth Englander, author of an accompanying editorial and director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Centre at Bridgewater State University. 

Rather than forbid sexting outright, parents should be teaching children to consider the consequences of doing it and help kids understand how to resist pressure to do anything that makes them feel uncomfortable, Englander said by e-mail. 

“Youth think of adults as worriers and as over-estimating risk, particularly when technology is involved, and many will tune out adults who just tell them ‘don’t do this’,” said Lisa Jones, a researcher at the Crimes Against Children Research Centre at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. 

“But sexting can be risky, and certainly nonconsensual sharing of explicit images is hurtful and even potentially criminal,” Jones, who was not involved in the study, said by e-mail. 

The study was not a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how sexting might cause health problems for teens. Another drawback is that many of the smaller studies in the analysis used different definitions of sexting that made it difficult to determine how often teens are sharing explicit words, videos or photos. 

Still, the results emphasize the importance of frank discussions about safe sexting, Jones said. 

“Youth need to have adults providing them with accurate information,” Jones added.

Healthy dieters reduced their risk factors for heart disease like weight and body fat equally when they followed a vegetarian diet that included eggs and dairy or with a Mediterranean diet that emphasised olive oil and lean fish, an Italian experiment found. 

Researchers randomly assigned 107 overweight adults to follow either a vegetarian or Mediterranean diet for three months, then to switch to the other diet for three more months. At the start of the study, all of the participants were omnivores, meaning they ate both animals and plants. 

People were not given particular weight loss goals, but they received regular counselling from nutritionists on how to reduce calories and suggested meals and menus were designed to be low-calorie. On both diets, participants were advised to consume 50 to 55 per cent of their calories from carbohydrates, 25 to 30 per cent from fats and 15 to 20 per cent from lean protein. 

Participants lost similar amounts of body fat and weight — about 4 pounds — with each diet, researchers report in Circulation. The “lacto-ovo” vegetarian diet which was associated with bigger reductions in “bad” LDL cholesterol, however, and the Mediterranean diet was linked to larger decreases in triglycerides and markers of inflammation. 

Each diet, separately, has been shown to produce to bigger improvements in weight and other risk factors for heart disease than a typical Western diet heavy on red meat, starch, processed foods and sugary drinks. But research to date has not offered a clear picture of how well a vegetarian diet stacks up against a Mediterranean diet, said lead study author Dr Francesco Sofi, a nutrition researcher at the University of Florence and Careggi University Hospital. 

“This is the first study that aimed to compare the two diets in the same groups of subjects who were omnivores,” Sofi said by e-mail. 

“The take-home message is that a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet is easy and feasible to follow, without any health problems, if well conducted and prepared by an instructed nutritionist,” Sofi added. “This helps you to reduce some cardiovascular risk factors as well as a Mediterranean diet.” 

A Mediterranean diet typically includes lots of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes and olive oil. This diet also tends to favour lean sources of protein like chicken or fish over red meat, which contains more saturated fat. 

Lacto-ovo vegetarians also eat fruits, vegetables and whole grains, as well as eggs and dairy, but avoid poultry, meat and fish. 

Compared to their eating habits at the start of the study, people significantly cut back on calories, total fat and saturated fats with each diet in the experiment. 

With the vegetarian diet, people did experience bigger reductions in low-density lipoprotein (LDL), the bad kind of cholesterol that can build up in blood vessels and lead to clots and heart attacks. That’s to be expected because a lot of LDL in the body comes from eating meat, Sofi said. 

The bigger reduction in triglycerides, or fatty acids, with the Mediterranean diet is also to be expected, Sofi said. That’s because a combination of olive oil, and complex carbohydrates in fruits and vegetables that are a hallmark of this diet are known to reduce triglycerides. 

While the study was a controlled experiment and offers solid evidence that both a vegetarian and Mediterranean diet can help lower certain risk factors for heart disease, the experiment wasn’t designed to show why one diet might be better for cholesterol or triglycerides, noted Cheryl Anderson, author of an accompanying editorial and a researcher at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. 

“To my knowledge, this is the first randomised clinical trial comparing the effectiveness of a low-calorie vegetarian diet to a low-calorie Mediterranean diet,” Anderson said. “It is novel that the study participants were relatively healthy, and at relatively low risk for cardiovascular disease.” 

These aren’t the only diets that can promote heart health, however. 

“Patients now have data to support multiple choices for types of diets they can follow for cardiovascular health promotion,” Anderson said. “They can find sample menus for each type of diet at choosemyplate.gov.” 

LOS ANGELES — For some, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” is a movie about an angry mother seeking justice. But others cannot get past its racist cop, who they feel is unfairly redeemed.

“Call Me By Your Name” is hailed as a heartbreaking gay romance, but some are puzzled that the filmmakers cast two straight actors to play the lead roles.

While recent years have seen the Oscars attacked for under-representing women or people of colour, this year’s contenders have been plagued by backlash and scandals ranging from accusations of plagiarism, sexual misconduct, and criticism from gay and African-American communities.

“Every main contender seems to have a knock on it,” said Dave Karger, special correspondent for movie database imdb.com.

Hollywood’s three-month-long awards season, culminating in the Oscars ceremony on Sunday, along with the influence of social media, has fuelled such criticism.

Fantasy “The Shape of Water”, which has a leading 13 nominations, was hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit last week alleging that its plot about a mute cleaner who falls for a mysterious river creature was lifted, without credit, from a 1969 play by late American playwright Paul Zindel.

Studio Fox Searchlight said the claims are “baseless [and] wholly without merit”.

20th Century Fox’s press freedom movie “The Post” has seen sniping over misperceptions that The Washington Post broke a story in 1971 about the classified Pentagon Papers study of the Vietnam War, and not the New York Times.

The loudest complaints have been levelled at Fox Searchlight’s best picture front-runner “Three Billboards”. Critics feel the dark comedy’s portrayal of a dim-witted and small-town racist cop, played by Sam Rockwell, is an affront to deep-seated prejudice that still exists in the United States and have called it “tone-deaf” and “hopelessly bad on race”.

British director Martin McDonagh, who also wrote the screenplay, has defended the film.

“I don’t think his [Rockwell’s] character is redeemed at all. He starts off as a racist jerk, he’s pretty much the same at the end, but by the end he’s seen that he has to change,” McDonagh told Entertainment Weekly in a February interview.

“It’s supposed to be a deliberately messy and difficult film. Because it’s a messy and difficult world”, McDonagh added.

The backlash has not so far derailed the path of “Three Billboards” to best picture wins at the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild and British BAFTAs, as well as multiple awards for Rockwell and lead actress Frances McDormand.

“People often latch onto the Oscars as a way of promoting their causes”, said Tim Gray, awards editor at Hollywood trade publication Variety. 

The #MeToo movement likely benefitted Christopher Plummer, who got a supporting actor Oscar nod after replacing Kevin Spacey last November in Sony Pictures kidnapping drama “All the Money in the World”. Spacey’s scenes were reshot after he was accused by multiple men of sexual harassment. He apologised for one incident and has retreated from public life.

As for Sony Pictures Classic’s “Call Me By Your Name”, director Luca Guadagnino, who is gay, said he cast straight actors Armie Hammer and Oscar nominee Timothee Chalamet as the film’s young lovers based on what he thought they could bring to the roles.

Final ballots went out to the 8,000 or so Academy members on February 20, but Karger thinks voters pay less attention to such controversies than the media.

“I think a lot of voters are really focused on the films and the performances and not the noise,” he said.