An atheist meets an al-Shabab 'recruiter'

Abubakar Shariff Ahmed is not a hard man to find. Ask around in the Majengo area of Mombasa and people will know where he lives.

But ask around too conspicuously and you are likely to arouse suspicion.
Mr Ahmed is perhaps better known by his nickname, Makaburi. It means "graveyard" in Swahili.
His name features on US and UN sanctions lists of people suspected of involvement in terrorism - accused of recruiting young Kenyan Muslims for violent militant activity in Somalia.
He himself believes the Kenyan police will one day try to kill him. So he is careful about his security.
We had made an appointment to see him one recent, sweltering afternoon, as the shadows lengthened on Majengo's dusty backstreets. We parked outside a pink-coloured apartment block, next to a car mechanic's workshop.
I wandered into a courtyard. It seemed empty. Suddenly, the clatter of flip flops on concrete and the cries of boys kicking a football. I asked one of them if he knew where Makaburi was. Not around, he shrugged.
I went back outside to wait. Two slightly older teenagers, with serious-looking beards, were by now sitting against the wall, next to a defunct fridge with a Coca Cola logo peeling off the side.

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"Where is Makaburi?" I asked. No response.

So we sat there without talking, listening to the sounds of the neighbourhood drift on the evening air, still and heavy with humidity. Finally, he showed.
Makaburi is one of those large men who carries his weight well - he moves slowly, but he is quick to smile and he exudes that easy-going manner that comes with self confidence.
We recorded an interview in his fourth floor flat - the two bearded youths came with us, watching proceedings with ill-concealed suspicion and hostility.
Makaburi's manner may be charming but his beliefs are uncompromising. The time is near he told me. An army of Allah will rise up out of the desert. It will come bearing a black flag and establish a global Islamic caliphate.
He denies recruiting for al-Shabab, or calling on his followers to travel to Somalia to fight.
"I do not have any followers," he says at one point. I nod towards the bearded teenagers. "Who are they?" I ask. "They have come to ask my advice," he says.

“Start Quote

I have not listened to music for more than a decade... where there is music, there is ungodliness”

Makaburi

His advice is that, if Islam is under attack, which he says it is, then it is every Muslim's duty to wage jihad.

After the interview we sat together on the roof where the breeze had picked up and the air was beginning to cool. "Let me invite you to Islam," he said, breaking once more into that charming smile.
I smiled back. "Regretfully," I said, "I am an atheist."
He screwed up his face, and waved towards the two bearded students, loitering now next to a nearby pigeon coop.
"Look at them," he said. "Each from a different Kenyan tribe, and me from yet another. But thanks to Islam, we are brothers. Religion brings us together."
I countered with a story I had once heard on this very programme. A BBC reporter in Bosnia, during the war in the 1990s, had asked an elderly gentleman whether he was a Croat or a Muslim?
The man's reproachful response had struck home: "I am a musician," he had said. Music could unite where religion divided. Makaburi was unimpressed.
"Everywhere there is music, there is ungodliness," he said

"Define ungodliness," I challenged him. I was beginning to enjoy our discussion.
He told me a story about a sailor he had known who had spent a long time at sea aboard a cargo ship. According to custom, after going to the toilet, he would wash instead of wipe.
But he was the only Muslim on board, and eventually the other sailors confronted him about the splashes of water around the loo. Could he stop it please, they found it unhygienic.
They were sitting at breakfast and there was a can of condensed milk open on the table. Makaburi's sailor friend took the hand of one of his colleagues and dabbed it with some of the sweet sticky substance.
"Now wipe it off with a tissue," he told him, "then lick your hand. Tell me does it still taste of condensed milk?"
The sailor did so and admitted that yes, his hand still tasted sweet.

The dabbing was repeated and the sailor was now invited to wash his hand with water.
Did his hand still taste of milk? It did not. The point was made.
"But surely this is not what it all boils down to," I protested. "Of course not," Makaburi beamed. "But let me give you a copy of the Koran," he pleaded. "You read it, you will see."
I promised I would, but on one condition. Would Makaburi in return listen to my favourite jazz album, and tell me honestly what he thought?
He looked disgusted. "No," he said, "no way. I have not listened to music for more than a decade." And so we parted, our cultural exchange, between atheist and Islamist, unconsummated.

More healing sleep for newborns

Sleeping like a baby is an oft-used cliche. But while sleep is crucial for sick and premature babies to grow and recover, it can be difficult in a bright, noisy hospital.

However those in a specially-designed ward in Bath can be confident of getting plenty of rest.
When we try to soothe a baby at home we keep the bedroom dark and quiet. Yet many sick babies are cared for in hospital wards that are neither particularly restful, dark nor quiet.
"There's not usually any controllable light in a hospital, it's very brightly lit and noisy - a technical environment," says Bernie Marden, a consultant neonatologist at the Royal United Hospital in Bath.

 

The nappy sensor

The new neonatal ward he runs has been designed with the needs of the families, babies and clinicians in mind - resulting in a fifth more sleep for the infants.
To check that the new unit provided a better environment for the babies a special movement monitor was created to record the babies' behaviour.
The man behind the device is Professor Mark Tooley, head of medical physics at the hospital.
It is about the same size and shape as a domino and even though it is a relatively simple device, there were challenges in its design.
"We had to make sure it couldn't get hot or interfere with the baby's wellbeing in any way. The hospital's ethics committee were rightly very strict about this," he said.
It contains three accelerometers, to detect movement in three different planes and this information is fed wirelessly to a computer. The device's battery can last up to five weeks.
Calming Putting it under the babies' armpit was the initial idea but the ethics committee said no.
"Putting it onto the nappy seemed the ideal solution.. but we did lose a few when nappies were changed because they were white and became almost invisible. We have now put a colourful sticker on them."
Baby Laila and her twin sister Aicha were born nearly three months early and will stay in the neonatal unit until around their original due date.
Their mother Samantha Rhodes relaxes in a comfortable reclining chair, with Aisha cradled on her chest.

 

 Laila and Aicha in the new unit with their mother Samantha

Both girls are now both feeding well and growing in the peaceful, dimly-lit neonatal unit.
Samantha and her daughters will be here for quite a while - probably until close to their original due date - so it is just as well they feel at home here: "It's not like a hospital, it's really relaxing."
It's not just premature babies who need extra help and support.
One in 10 of all babies born at this hospital will spend some time in the neonatal unit for a variety of reasons - usually because they are premature or the stress of birth.
Bernie Marden says: "In the new unit we have noticed that materials like wood have encouraged a calming environment - the families tend to tone down their voices.
"In the babies we studied we found that they had 20% more sleep here in the new unit - and while they're resting they're growing, and recovering.
"There is a slightly noisier time during the morning but after then it quietens down again. The overall noise level dipped by eight decibels, compared with the old unit. And the parents are more involved in their care."
Flatpack ward The architects behind the new unit - Fielden Clegg Bradley Studios - had never built a healthcare facility before.

Natural light streams into the new neonatal unit at the Royal United Hospital in Bath

The calm atmosphere in the unit was created by consulting with everyone from the lead doctors to the cleaners.
Jo Wright, who was in charge of the project, said: "In the old unit space was very tight, everyone was on top of each other. We didn't want to go the tried-and-tested route.
"The use of natural materials like wood came out of a desire to be sustainable. We obviously had to verify it was OK with the infection control team.
"Much of it came as a flatpack and minimised disruption as we were building close to the delivery suite."
The impact of the new neonatal unit was evaluated by Mike Osborn - a clinical psychologist at the hospital who specialises in supporting patients affected by chronic pain and cancer.
"The old unit had no natural light - it was like being inside a hot, dusty submarine, you couldn't tell if it was day or night.
'Less anxious and tense' "And because babies are small there was a feeling that the department could be small, but it was difficult for the mums to get to their babies it was so cramped."
The parents appear to benefit also from the light and space in the new unit - the bar stools they used to sit on have been replaced with reclining comfortable chairs.
"I used to get called down to parents in a panic - as if they'd had 17 espresso coffees. Now they're less anxious and tense and I sometimes have to wake them up to talk to them."
Breastfeeding rates have gone up - in the new unit 90% of the babies go home breastfeeding, compared with 64% in the old unit.
Mike Osborn says the positive experience in the neonatal unit has provided a blueprint for the rest of his hospital: "We are hoping to rebuild our cancer department and now we have a benchmark for building compassionate environments here and elsewhere.
"Treatments can be horrible but we can do something to soothe our patients."

Speed dating: Why are women more choosy?

Women are twice as choosy as men when they go speed dating, research suggests. Why might that be?

Trying to work out who is single in a bar, approach them and asking them out before you know anything about them is not a very efficient way of finding a girlfriend or boyfriend.
There is a solution - speed dating, where a group of singles meet at an event in a bar or cafe. The men move from table to table for a fleeting date with each woman, lasting typically between three to four minutes.
Afterwards the participants tell the organisers, often online, which people they want to see again.
A recent study into speed dating habits concluded that if men and women go to an evening and have 22 separate dates, men are keen to see about five women again, while women would only choose to see two again, on average.
That means that for every offer a woman makes, she has roughly a 50-50 chance that the man will want to see her again too.
But for every offer a man makes, he only has a one in five chance that the desire to meet again is reciprocated.

More or Less: Behind the stats

The research was done by economists Michele Belot from the University of Edinburgh and her colleague Marco Francesconi from the University of Essex, who collected data from 84 speed dating events involving 3,600 people in the UK.

This controlled environment is something that excites some economists as they are perfect for observing market forces at work- in this case the dating market.
But why are men less fussy?
"This is something that evolutionary psychologists and biologists do recognise," says Belot. "We know that across a whole range of behaviours women tend to take fewer risks.
"They relate this to the fact that making mistakes are much more costly for women than for men because of childbearing. So obviously if you make a mistake in dating the wrong man and having a relationship with the wrong man, you might have nine months carrying a child, then caring for a child. While for men, the costs are lower."
Other academic work suggests that because men historically have not been so involved in parenting, they devote more time to "short-term mating", so they're not looking further than a date.
A study in the US, on the other hand, suggests the difference might simply be down to the seating arrangements, because the convention is for women to sit still at the events, while men move round and approach each woman.
The researchers found that when the roles were reversed at speed dating events, and women moved round to approach the men, they found that women made more offers than they did at events when they sat still. One possible theory is that the person who moves has more confidence.

Belot and Francesconi's study also took all the data provided by each person from their profile, to work out what attributes people were looking for in a potential mate.
"For both men and women, education and professional status matters. We found that women prefer taller men and men prefer slimmer women," says Belot.
Perhaps this is not a big surprise. But it turns out - people are often ready to compromise on these preferences.
So, if a woman likes academic men, but she goes speed dating one night and no one is particularly academic, she will lower her expectations on this occasion, and instead pick men who next best fit her criteria.
Belot thinks one explanation is that people who go to a speed dating event assume that is representative of the pool of available single people.
But if you break out of the mould of what you think you want, it could actually be beneficial for society at large.
People marry people very similar to themselves - from the same socio-economic background for example. And economists argue that this stops social mobility between generations.
For instance, people from rich privileged backgrounds marry each other, while people from more disadvantaged backgrounds marry each other.
But speed dating shows that people are not too fixed in their views of who they should date, says Belot, if they are given the opportunity.
"It's interesting to see [with speed dating] it gives a bit of hope that if you do mix people, they do tend to mix."

Ukraine protesters quit key building

Ukraine protesters are vacating city hall in Kiev, the symbolic centre of prolonged anti-government demonstrations, eyewitnesses say.

"City hall is almost completely evacuated", opposition spokesman Ruslan Andriyko told AFP.
The government had promised to drop all charges against demonstrators if they vacate government buildings and lift roadblocks by Monday.
City hall has been occupied by protesters for more than two months.
The protests started in November when President Viktor Yanukovych abandoned plans to sign a far-ranging association agreement with the EU.
Instead, he advocated closer trade relations with Russia, which dominated Ukraine for centuries until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Prisoners released People began walking out of the building on Sunday morning.
The Swiss ambassador in Kiev entered the building soon afterwards in order to help transfer the building to the control of the authorities.
Switzerland currently holds the rotating presidency of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
On Friday authorities released the last of 243 prisoners who were arrested during the unrest.
Mr Yanukovich passed an amnesty law earlier this month and agreed to negotiate with the opposition after at least four people were killed in protests.
This weekend, some opposition members continued to call for his departure, and another demonstration is due to place in Kiev's central Independence Square.
"The only subject of negotiation with Yanukovych is the conditions of his departure," jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko said on Saturday.
She went to accuse the Ukrainian president of being under the control of Russia's Vladimir Putin, his major international backer.

 

 Protesters created their own ad-hoc security forces in the capital Kiev

Morsi spying and terror trial opens

Deposed Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi has begun a new trial, on charges of espionage and conspiring to commit acts of terror.

He and 35 others are accused of working with Lebanese and Palestinian groups to carry out attacks in Egypt.
The charges are one of four prosecutions that the Islamist former leader now faces.
Mr Morsi was ousted by the military last July following mass street protests against his rule.
Since then there has been a severe crackdown on his Muslim Brotherhood group, as well as on other activists seen as hostile to the military-backed government.
The Brotherhood has been declared a terrorist organisation and authorities have punished any public show of support for it.
Other senior Brotherhood figures are also facing a raft of charges, including supreme guide Mohammed Badie and his deputy and former presidential candidate Khairat al-Shater.
At least 1,000 people have died in clashes between security forces and pro-Morsi protesters since he was deposed, with thousands more arrested.
Morsi defiant Mr Morsi was brought to Cairo's police academy on Sunday morning by helicopter from the Burj al-Arab prison where he is being held.
In this latest trial, Mr Morsi is accused of collaborating with the Palestinian movement Hamas, Lebanon's Hezbollah and Iran's Revolutionary Guards. If convicted he could receive the death penalty.

Four trials of Mohammed Morsi

• Incitement of supporters to commit violence and murder during break-up of December 2012 protest
• Conspiring with foreign organisations (Hamas and Hezbollah) to commit terrorist acts
• Murder of prison officers in jailbreak during 2011 uprising against President Mubarak
• Insulting the judiciary

Proceedings in two other trials have already begun:

• The first opened in November on charges of inciting the killing of protesters near the presidential palace when he was in office in 2012.
• In January another trial opened concerning his escape from prison in a jailbreak in 2011, during which police officers were killed.
• The fourth trial will be on charges of insulting the judiciary.

Mr Morsi's supporters say he and other senior Brotherhood leaders are the victims of politically motivated prosecutions.
In his previous court appearances Mr Morsi has struck a defiant tone, refusing to recognise the legitimacy of the court and insisting that he is still the rightful president.
During that court appearance, from inside a glassed-in defendants' cage, he shouted: "I am the president of the republic. How can I be kept in a dump for weeks?"