#2
It was the Prime Minister's wife, you'll recall, who last year won a famous court victory for Shabina Begum, as a result of which schools across the land must now permit students to wear the full "jilbab" - ie, Muslim garb that covers the entire body except the eyes and hands. Ms Booth hailed this as "a victory for all Muslims who wish to preserve their identity and values despite prejudice and bigotry". It seems almost too banal to observe that such an extreme preservation of Miss Begum's Muslim identity must perforce be at the expense of any British identity. Nor, incidentally, is Miss Begum "preserving" any identity: she's of Bangladeshi origin, and her adolescent adoption of the jilbab is a symbol of the Arabisation of South Asian (and African and European) Islam that's at the root of so many problems. It's no more part of her inherited identity than my five-year- old dressing up in his head-to-toe Darth Vader costume, to which at a casual glance it's not dissimilar.
Posted by: ed ||
07/19/2005 07:32 ||
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#1
Worth reading apart from some PC blather at the end. It recognizes the problem - unassimilated muslim minorities and how multicuturalism has encouraged this process.
#2
It's the same joke we used to make about "bi-lingual" education. Usually it should be dubbed "mono-lingual". In the last 25 years, they haven't been pushing a "multi-cultural" environment but it's really segregation.
Mona Eltahawy
It is time to declare once and for all the absurdity of the âGeorge Bush made me do itâ excuse that is dragged out every time Muslims carry out a terrorist attack.
It was as ridiculous on July 7 when terrorists struck London as it was on September 11, 2001 when they hit New York and Washington . Many people across the world have opposed U.S. and British foreign policy but they are not rushing to fly planes into buildings or to blow up buses and Underground trains in London .
If we want to avoid another attack somewhere else next year that will just add to the list of shame, kill dozens more, further endanger the lives of Muslims living in the West and make it more difficult and humiliating for Muslims to travel to the West, we have to knock the phrase âGeorge Bush made me do itâ out of our vocabulary.
It is long past overdue that we stopped blaming everyone but ourselves. We have all known about the growing extremism and militancy among our communities but it was easier to ignore them and say âweâre not like thatâ than to confront it head on. A clear example of this and the resulting hypocrisy of blaming everyone but ourselves can be found among the âArab and Muslim intellectualsâ who live in London and who are interviewed by the Arab media and then the Western media.
Much has been written and said about the militant groups and extremists who have found shelter in London . But not enough is said about these so-called intellectuals who are little more than apologists for a terrorism that not only kills innocents in the dozens but ruins the lives of the millions of Muslims living in the West.
Hearing their interviews on Arab television after the London attacks, you would think that George Bush himself along with Tony Blair had gone to Leeds, led those four young men to London and pushed the button of their explosives for them. These so-called intellectuals were practically gloating that George Bush and Tony Blair had been taught a lesson they would not forget on July 7.
All of this is said in Arabic of course. These so-called intellectuals think this is what the Arab world wants to hear.
But to read the comments these same so-called intellectuals make to American newspapers you would think that they had developed amnesia and forgotten everything they had said just days earlier on Arabic television.
These same so-called intellectuals who on Arabic television could not utter a sentence without mentioning George Bush and Tony Blair are suddenly restrained, mournful and full of regret. Instead of blaming George Bush for everything, they tell The Washington Post or The New York Times that they are shocked, horrified and cannot begin to understand why young Muslim men would blow themselves up on London public transport.
To these so-called intellectuals I say it is time to speak in one voice â not one for the Arab world and another for the âkhawagasâ. The Arab world is sickened to the stomach by violence. Have these so-called intellectuals forgotten the years of bloodshed in Algeria ? The years of militant violence in Egypt ? The terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia ? And no matter whether you supported or opposed the invasion of Iraq , what is the position of these so-called intellectuals on the suicide bombing that killed 20 Iraqi children this past week? Was that George Bushâs fault too?
Just as bad as these so-called Arab and Muslim intellectuals who speak in two voices are the Western liberals who will bend over backwards but allow Muslims to take responsibility for the scourge of extremism and terrorism that threatens us just as much as it threatens them.
Do not be deceived by their apparent support of the âMuslim causeâ. They do not care about the many Muslims who endanger their lives by speaking out and confronting terrorists and extremists in their communities, be they in the Arab and Muslim world in the West.
It is racist to think that Muslims cannot accept responsibility for the wrongs in our communities. These people do us no favours. While brave writers such as Badriya al-Bishr here at Asharq al-Awsat dissect the twisted thinking of extremists and terrorists, supposedly liberal writers in the West fill pages upon pages that make excuses for the horrendous terrorism that kills innocents, Muslims and non-Muslims.
Such liberals are so busy opposing George Bush that they do not see Muslims. They are talking above our heads. And furthermore, many think this is our âcultureâ anyway.
Never trust anyone who refuses to let you accept responsibility for a mistake. Such a person does not want you to mature or else they think you are incapable of maturity. That is the ultimate insult.
It is important to repeat once again my opposition to the invasion of Iraq and to most of George Bushâs policies. I am not an American citizen so I could not vote in the last U.S. presidential elections. If I could have voted, I would not have voted for George Bush.
Regardless, unless we push aside the facile âGeorge Bush made me do itâ excuse, we will never make any headway in squeezing out extremism.
The London bombings were even worse than previous terrorist attacks because the four bombers were all British born and raised. It is impossible to exaggerate what a catastrophe this is to Muslims living in the West. It was the biggest gift to racist right wing groups in the West who have tried to portray us as a fifth column.
Letâs stop giving these racists more gifts. Letâs speak in one voice that accepts responsibility and begin to find ways out of this monumental mess that will affect us all and, please, leave George Bush out of this.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/19/2005 00:25 ||
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#1
Born in Egypt in 1967, Mona She was a correspondent for the Reuters News Agency in Cairo and Jerusalem and also wrote for the Guardian newspaper from the Middle East. Mona is also a frequent contributor to opinion pages in the US and abroad. Her Op-Eds have appeared in The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, The New York Times
I guess she'll be unemployed soon. Maybe she can get syndicated if she doesn't get murdered first.
BTW - Kudos to Fred for some really great pieces today!! Not that they aren't always great.
#2
Britons sound pissed off! I wonder why their boy Blair is being such a muslim smooching pussy about all this. They want blood, he should make the streets run red with it.
#4
Britons *are* pissed off bigjim-ky, the amount of coverage designed to show that the London bombers were an abberation is extraordinary.
Blair (who I keep reminding people here, is a Socialist) is inviting Muslim 'community leaders' and others to Downing Street to special talks.
The London bombings were even worse than previous terrorist attacks because the four bombers were all British born and raised. It is impossible to exaggerate what a catastrophe this is to Muslims living in the West. It was the biggest gift to racist right wing groups in the West who have tried to portray us as a fifth column.
Hmmm, I wondered when that might come out. There are not that many right-wing racists in this country. I expect she is alluding to the turnout for the BNP in certain elections. I think that most of that turnout came about because people in those areas were constantly being told by their NuLabour betters (their traditional political party) that they were being racist and they decided enough was enough. However, there *are* plenty of left-wing racists here who see everything as being the fault of 'the white man' (remember the comment of the Guardian editor the other day bemoaning the fact that too many of his staff were 'male and pale'), but I digress.
Mona may want to read the words of a particular poem by Rudyard Kipling, The Beginning written in 1914-1918.
It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late
With long arrears to make good,
When the English began to hate.
They were not easily moved,
They were icy-willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the English began to hate.
Their voices were even and low,
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show,
When the English began to hate.
It was not preached to the crowd,
It was not taught by the State.
No man spoke it aloud,
When the English began to hate.
It was not suddenly bred,
It will not swiftly abate,
Through the chill years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the English began to hate.
We're not there yet, it will take several more attacks before that happens, but Mona and people like her really need to get their skates on.
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
07/19/2005 11:07 Comments ||
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#5
excellent, Tony!
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/19/2005 11:59 Comments ||
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I know we don't normally do blog links here but I thought you all might enjoy seeing this. It's funny but the aftermath is anything but.
For those who don't have time to troll through that whole thread here's the synopsis: Chris noticed a few familiar IP addresses accessing his Team Infidel videos, addresses that almost certainly uniquely identify the visitors as senior management at his employer two of whom are devout Muslims. Almost immediately he was fired and told that his performance was exemplary but his management style no longer fit the company.
Shortly thereafter he was contacted by the FBI and warned that a fatwah ordering his death had been issued and that his home address and personal contact information along with that of his girlfriend, family, friends, and former employers was being circulated in jihadi circles. The FBI informed him that there was a specific order for his death and an acknowledgement that the order would be carried out from Palestinean and Saudi terrorist groups known to have members in the US.
#1
Sux to be this guy - I wonder if going to the media would do any good? Probably not.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
07/19/2005 13:15 Comments ||
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#2
There is a distinct fact deficit here. Until some material details are clear, I have serious doubts. The MO is quite unlike the FBI I know and love.
#3
His employer should be posted and any government contracts voided. The names of the two top devout Muslims who went after him should be placed in a public place.
Hold on to your hat. The plot is about to thicken.
Behind the scenes, the single most important reason for the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson farce is that CIA Director Porter Goss has finally started to clean house at Langley. Goss's long-overdue shake-up is clearly backed by the White House, the top levels of the Pentagon and State Department, and the new National Director of Intelligence, John Negroponte. Judging by Director Goss's remarks at his Senate confirmation hearings, those whose jobs are most in danger include the CIA "experts" in WMD proliferation â Valerie Plame's outfit â who completely failed to anticipate the Indian and Pakistani nukes, and just couldn't figure out what was going on with Iraqi WMDs. Valerie Plame's bosses are facing the axe for decades of failures.
And it's about time, because Iran is within sight of its first nukes. You don't suppose that has anything to do with the Plame/Wilson publicity stunt, do you? Clearly the CIA managers who failed the United States so terribly on 9/11 should have been fired four years ago. Others now worried about their careers include officials who have long resisted the onerous task of building a topnotch human intelligence capability in the most dangerous parts of the world.
Porter Goss's new broom should also sweep away:
1) personnel who utterly failed to thwart critical technology theft by China during the Clinton years;
2) those who constantly undermine the war on terror;
3) the ones who make a regular habit of dropping media stinkbombs against the White House.
4) Finally, there is the faction that supported Saddam Hussein's hold on power, as Joe Wilson did.
It could be a bloodbath, and the Permanent Establishment knows it.
The farcical Plame/Wilson assault on Karl Rove is a shot across the bow of the White House. The spook bureaucracy is fighting for its perks, hand-in-hand with the Democrats and the media. This is exactly the same iron triangle that destroyed Richard Nixon. The charge against Rove is based on a blatantly forged document, purporting to show that Saddam tried to buy Niger yellowcake uranium. We now know that the document was forged by the French government to embarrass Secretary Colin Powell, and undermine the American case against Saddam at the UN. It was classic disinformation bait. Powell flourished the Niger forgery at the Security Council, and the very next day "European intelligence agencies" leaked word that it was a laughable fraud. Months later, the London Telegraph published the fact that it was all a French disinformation ploy.
The CIA has to know all about the French forgery, just as it knows that Joseph Wilson's famous trip to Niger was pure bilgewater. Nobody sends a has-been diplomat to Africa to drink mint tea with corrupt old President Tandja Mamadou, expecting to discover whether Mamadou has secretly been selling nuke materials to Saddam. That's pure Inspector Clousseau. Valerie Plame's CIA bosses took care not to ask Mr. Wilson to sign a confidentiality agreement, routine in such cases, almost as if they wanted him to make a public fuss. They were not surprised, one might think, when Mr. Wilson promptly took his story to New York Times Op-Ed Editor Gail Collins, one of the great Bush-haters of all time. As Joseph DiGenova, former US Attorney for DC, recently said, "The CIA isnât stupid. They wanted this story out."
It was a publicity stunt from the get-go. Wilson's "confidential trip" to Niger gave him the superficial credentials to publish his "expose" in the Times. He'd gone there, talked to the top officials face to face, and by gum, they told him it was all a lie! Not even Gail Collins could possibly believe this banana sauce, but Wilson's charges provided a useful stick with which to beat the White House. What Karl Rove apparently did was to hint to reporters about the fraudulence of the whole Wilson stunt, and for that the media mob wants him drawn and quartered. No good deed goes unpunished.
Everything else Wilson has been saying on his two-year speaking tour around the country has been shown to be lies, but well-designed lies --- lies that fit right into the mad-dog world of the Democrat Left. Telling lies to confirm somebody's paranoid beliefs is a classic disinformation gambit, right out of Spy School 101. But such gambits would be far more usefully employed against al Qaeda, our opponent in war. If the United States is attacked again by terrorists, one reason will be that our CIA has wasted time fighting the White House rather than the enemy. Given Wilson's Niger trip, set up by wife Valerie for Joe Wilson to publicly show that a blatant forgery was, well, a forgery, the current media attack on the White House was completely predictable.
The Permanent Establishment had a perfect dress rehearsal last year with the uproar about Richard Clarke, who also worked in the Clinton White House, possibly next door to Joe Wilson. The barely-disguised message to George W. Bush was: if you try to get rid of us, we may pull a Deep Throat on you. J. Edgar Hoover would have seen through it instantly. When the Twin Towers exploded in 2001, President Bush did not touch the FBI or the CIA. By comparison, after the Japanese decimated the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941, FDR and George Marshall churned the commanding ranks of the Army and Navy, elevating talented officers like Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton. They created Wild Bill Donovan's OSS, the seed of the CIA. Donovan in his turn brought street spooks to the top, political correctness (of the day) be damned. A lot of careers were broken, and the new talent skyrocketed. It worked like a charm. The infusion of new blood into a stale bureaucracy was the key to victory in World War II. The old crew had allowed a deplorable situation to develop, and were obviously incapable of recognizing what needed to be done. So why didn't Mr. Bush clean out the dead wood at CIA?
A reasonable guess is that his father warned against it. George Bush, Sr. is a former CIA Director, after all, and is intimately familiar with its ways. He was a GOP Congressman during Watergate, when Mark Felt destroyed Richard Nixon for thwarting his lifelong ambition to succeed J. Edgar Hoover. Paraphrasing LBJ's immortal words, it was smarter to keep the CIA inside the tent pissing out rather than the other way around. So George Tenet wasnât fired, and as far as we can tell, neither was anybody else. Instead, the President met with Tenet every day for five years to get the latest about al Qaeda, and surely gained a deeper understanding of the intelligence maze at the same time.
The White House has played a very careful poker game since then, picking its cards one by one until it was ready to make the big move. Today, George Tenet is out, State and Defense are in the hands of Bush loyalists, the House and Senate have GOP majorities, and the new CIA Director is not an insider. The CIA itself is now subordinate to the new National Director of Intelligence, John Negroponte, a no-nonsense diplomat in the Kissinger mold. When Goss became Director, Agency bureaucrats complained bitterly to the press. Mr. Bush now holds all the cards, and it is time to play them. All this isn't just fun and games. It casts a deadly light on internecine warfare in Washington at a time of great national danger.
We know that Hoover blackmailed four successive Presidents by threatening to reveal confidential FBI secrets. We know that Hoover's fair-haired boy, Mark Felt, destroyed the Nixon Presidency â a virtual coup d'etat that the media tell us was a victory of Democracy over the Secret Government. With the media as destinyâs servant. We know that Nixon taped visitors to the Oval Office without their permission, but that FDR, LBJ, and Kennedy did the same, without facing media exposure. And during the unbelievable Clinton years we know that Bill and Hillary abused presidential power in a dozen egregious ways, and may still control copies of raw FBI files to use against their domestic enemies. But it was Richard Nixon alone who got caught by a rogue FBI bureaucrat. Deep Throat showed how a president can be destroyed by a bureaucrat.
The farcical "outing" of Valerie Plame therefore raises a genuinely frightening monster from the swamp: A subversive alliance between the intelligence bureaucracy, the Democratic Party and the media. The common thread among all the characters in this low-brow comedy is hatred of President Bush and American power. Joe Wilson's eyebrows go ballistic when he talks about the White House. Just watch him sometime.
The sneering media mob is on display on C-SPAN whenever the White House holds a press briefing. The Left is apoplectic: "Karl Rove + traitor" brought up 97,000 entries on google three days ago, and 124,000 this morning.
But Karl Rove is merely today's target for a permanent state of rage so deep and hot that it is always seeking new witches to burn. As for the failed CIA spooks who are now living in fear of losing their perks, one can only imagine the steam blowing from their ears, as the day of reckoning draws closer.
I'm cheering for the good guys.
James Lewis
Posted by: Steve ||
07/19/2005 11:27 ||
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#1
Small problem with his theory about the Plame game - Wilson's trip and the CIA referral to Justice were both long before Goss arrived at Langley. His larger point about the housecleaning needed looks spot on to this civilan, however.
1) personnel who utterly failed to thwart critical technology theft by China during the Clinton years;
2) those who constantly undermine the war on terror;
3) the ones who make a regular habit of dropping media stinkbombs against the White House.
4) Finally, there is the faction that supported Saddam Hussein's hold on power, as Joe Wilson did.
Damn, Goss is gonna need an open ended account with these folks.
#3
Nixon's problem was that he was actually involved in the coverup of an actual crime. George W. has made it clear that he will not brook anyone involved in the coverup of a crime, if that is what the Plame controversy turns out to be.
Posted by: john ||
07/19/2005 16:17 Comments ||
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#4
clean the clintonistas from all wings of the gov't, but particularly the CIA and FBI. Neither can point to their achievements as reasons they should stay
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/19/2005 16:46 Comments ||
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By Christopher Orlet
On his deathbed, Pope Gregory VII (1020-1085) is reported to have said, "I have loved justice and hated iniquity; therefore I die in exile." Gregory's words might just as well be attributed to his fellow countryman Oriana Fallaci. Wanted for a speech crime in her native Italy, Europe's most celebrated journalist now passes her days in exile in an upper Manhattan townhouse. In May, Fallaci was indicted under a provision of the Italian penal code that criminalizes the "vilification of any religion admitted by the state." Specifically it is charged that her latest book The Force of Reason (due out in the U.S. in October) "defames Islam," which is a little like charging Paul Revere with disturbing the peace. (Tony Blair has promised to introduce similar legislation in Britain. Blasphemy laws, once a mainstay of the Dark Ages, are fast returning to the law books throughout the West.)
The plaintiff is an Italian Muslim activist with the infidel name of Adel Smith. Smith is believed to be the author of the pamphlet "Islam Punishes Oriana Fallaci," a screed that calls upon Muslims to "eliminate" the journalist and to "go and die with Fallaci." Smith was also behind a recent court decision banning crucifixes from public school classrooms (the crucifix, according to Smith, is a "miniature cadaver"). And he has called for the removal of Dante's Divine Comedy from high school syllabus, and the destruction of the medieval fresco, "The Last Judgment" by Giovanni da Modena, in Bologna Cathedral, both of which depict the prophet Mohammed in hell. After 9/11, the former Scot turned Italian Muslim put the demolition of the priceless artwork on the backburner while he turned to other assaults on Christianity. During a January 2003 television show, Smith repeatedly called Christianity a "criminal association" whose head, Pope John Paul II, was "a foreigner who leads the church and who is con man." (In an all-too-rare case of poetic justice, an Italian court last month sentenced Smith to six months in prison for defaming Catholicism.)
Yet, despite the U.S.'s relative tolerance for free expression, Fallaci has not been particularly welcomed here either. The journalist first earned the contempt of the Intellectual Left with her vocal opposition to abortion. Today many intellectuals, both left and right, regard her as an anti-Muslim racist. As with Salman Rushdie before her, the cultural elites seem a little embarrassed by Fallaci, and not a few believe that both Rushdie and Fallaci deserve their fate.
In a 2003 interview with the New York Observer, "La Fallaci," as she is known in Europe, flatly denied the racist charge: "Racist has to do with race and not with religion. Yes, I am against that religion, a religion that controls the life of people every minute of their day, that puts the burka on women, that treats women as camels, that preaches polygamy, that cuts the hands off poor thieves...[Islam] is not even a religion, in my opinion. It is a tyranny, a dictatorship -- the only religion on earth that has never committed a work of self-criticism....It becomes worse and worse...and now they want to come impose it on me, on us."
In Italia, where the The Force of Reason has sold more than a million copies, Fallaci is rather more popular. In Force she writes that the long-awaited fall of the West has commenced -- not due to communism, but to Islamic fascism. And she argues that Western-style democracy, with its long tradition of liberty, human rights, freedom of thought and religion, and Islamic fundamentalism cannot coexist. As proof, she cites attempts by France's Union of Italian Muslims to ban her first book, The Rage and the Pride, and her recent indictment at home.
Despite the indictment, the almost constant death threats and the recent murders of outspoken critics of radical Islam, La Fallaci remains undeterred in her criticism of Islamofascism. European Muslims, she says, not only refuse to assimilate, but seem determined to undermine Western society. "The increased presence of Muslims in Italy, and in Europe, is directly proportional to our loss of freedom," she writes. More dire are her predictions that an apathetic Europe will soon become part of a new Islamic Empire she calls Eurabia... "Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam. And Italy is an outpost of that province, a stronghold of that colony....In each of our cities lies a second city: a Muslim city, a city run by the Quran. A stage in the Islamic expansionism."
The daughter of a political activist who opposed Mussolini, Fallaci was for many years a respected war correspondent covering the Vietnam War and the Indo-Pakistani War. She survived being shot three times during a student uprising in Mexico City, and went on to write one of the classics of modern journalism, An Interview With History, which contains her trademark confrontational interviews with Kissinger, Deng Xiaoping, the Shah of Iran, Arafat, Ayatollah Khomeini, Muammar Qaddafi, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, and Federico Fellini. "I do not feel myself to be, nor will I ever succeed in feeling like, a cold recorder of what I see and hear," she writes in the preface to Interview. "On every professional experience I leave shreds of my heart and soul; and I participate in what I see or hear as though the matter concerned me personally and were one on which I ought to take a stand (in fact I always take one, based on a specific moral choice)."
At 75, the petite, blue-eyed former World War II resistance fighter who once smuggled explosives past Nazi checkpoints, remains as feisty as ever. Particularly when she receives one of her frequent death threats. She lets the caller have his say, she told the Observer, "Then I say, 'Do you know where it is your mother and your wife and your sister and your daughter are right in this moment? They are in a brothel in Beirut. And do you know what they're doing? They are giving away their' -- I don't tell it to you, but I tell it to them -- 'and you know to whom? To an American!"
Always the fighter, La Fallaci is today waging a losing battle against breast cancer, and doesn't expect to be around for her June 2006 trial, though she suspects she would be found guilty. In the meantime she still has much to say:
"The clash between us and them is not a military one," she warns. "It is a cultural one, a religious one, and the worst is still to come."
The West would do well to listen to the words of La Fallaci.
#1
Yet, despite the U.S.'s relative tolerance for free expression, Fallaci has not been particularly welcomed here either. The journalist first earned the contempt of the Intellectual Left with her vocal opposition to abortion. Today many intellectuals, both left and right, regard her as an anti-Muslim racist. As with Salman Rushdie before her, the cultural elites seem a little embarrassed by Fallaci, and not a few believe that both Rushdie and Fallaci deserve their fate.
These pseudo-intellectuals should be deported to Sudan to live under Sharia law for a year or so. Enough of these pretenders!
#2
Oriana is a hero. Though I might not agree with her on some issues that in no way takes away from the respect she is due for being honest with her readers and the fact she makes her feeling and understanding plain.
Make me wonder why people listen to wankers when persons like her speak from vision and expiernce.
Respecting the ideas of our elders is a good idea sometimes.
Without it -- without its fanatics who believe all civilizations are the same -- the engine that projects Islam into the unprotected heart of Western civilization would stall and fail. It's as simple as that. To live among the believers -- the multiculturalists -- is to watch the assault, the jihad, take place un-repulsed by our suicidal societies. These societies are not doomed to submit; rather, they are eager to do so in the name of a masochistic brand of tolerance that, short of drastic measures, is surely terminal.
I'm not talking about our soldiers, policemen, rescue workers and, now, even train conductors, who bravely and steadfastly risk their lives for civilization abroad and at home. Instead, I'm thinking about who we are as a society at this somewhat advanced stage of war. It is a strange, tentative civilization we have become, with leaders who strut their promises of "no surrender" even as they flinch at identifying the foe. Four years past 9/11, we continue to shadow-box "terror," even as we go on about "an ideology of hate." It's a script that smacks of sci-fi fantasy more than realpolitik. But our grim reality is no summer blockbuster, and there's no special-effects-enhanced plot twist that is going to thwart "terror" or "hate" in the London Underground anymore than it did on the roof of the World Trade Center. Or in the Bali nightclub. Or on the first day of school in Beslan. Or in any disco, city bus or shopping mall in Israel.
Body bags, burn masks and prosthetics are no better protections than make-believe. But these are our weapons, according to the powers that be. These, and an array of high-tech scopes and scanners designed to identify retinas and fingerprints, to detect explosives and metals -- ultimately, I presume, as we whisk through the automatic supermarket door. How strange, though, that even as we devise new ways to see inside ourselves to our most elemental components, we also prevent ourselves from looking full-face at the danger to our way of life posed by Islam.
Notice I didn't say "Islamists." Or "Islamofascists." Or "fundamentalist extremists." I've tried out such terms in the past, but I've come to find them artificial and confusing, and maybe purposefully so, because in their imprecision I think they allow us all to give a wide berth to a great problem: the gross incompatibility of Islam -- the religious force that shrinks freedom even as it "moderately" enables or "extremistly" advances jihad -- with the West. Am I right? Who's to say? The very topic of Islamization -- for that is what is at hand, and very soon in Europe -- is verboten. A leaked British report prepared for Prime Minister Tony Blair last year warned even against "expressions of concern about Islamic fundamentalism" (another one of those amorphous terms) because "many perfectly moderate Muslims follow strict adherence to traditional Islamic teachings and are likely to perceive such expressions as a negative comment on their own approach to their faith." Much better to watch subterranean tunnels fill with charred body parts in silence. As the London Times' Simon Jenkins wrote, "The sane response to urban terrorism is to regard it as an avoidable accident."
In not discussing the roots of terror in Islam itself, in not learning about them, the multicultural clergy that shepherds our elites prevents us from having to do anything about them. This is key, because any serious action -- stopping immigration from jihad-sponsoring nations, shutting down mosques that preach violence and expelling their imams, just for starters -- means to renounce the multicultural creed. In the West, that's the greatest apostasy. And while the penalty is not death -- as it is for leaving Islam under Islamic law -- the existential crisis is to be avoided at all costs. Including extinction.
This is the lesson of the atrocities in London. It's unlikely that the 21st century will remember that this new Western crossroads for global jihad was once the home of Churchill, Piccadilly and Sherlock Holmes. Then again, who will notice? The BBC has retroactively purged its online bombing coverage of the word "terrorist"; the spokesman for the London police commissioner has declared that "Islam and terrorism simply don't go together"; and within sight of a forensics team sifting through rubble, an Anglican priest urged his flock, as The Guardian reported, to "rejoice in the capital's rich diversity of cultures, traditions, ethnic groups and faiths." Just don't, he said, "name them as Muslims."
#1
heh..I was just thinking how in thousands of years, little has changed. It's the same exact battle that was fought long ago. They attacked the Spaniards and semi-succeeded. They attacked the Anglo Saxons and got their rears kicked back to where we didn't care about them anymore.
"where we don't care about them anymore" is different now. I hope will be different in Iraq and Turkey and some of the other more modern states. But time will tell if the creed they live by will ultimately undo the will of the good people who live there.
I'm noticing a distinct change in the dialogue now that the British have been hit. A big hit on France or Germany will most likely produce a similar response. Maybe they should get an old crusades map out to see where the minimum final border lines will be drawn.
The whole premise that, because they are both beliefs, our Western society and their misogynistic, homophobic, goat-f***ing society are morally equivalent is the same thing as saying a diamond and a lump of coal are the equivalent. They're both carbon, right?
Our society has a cancer that needs to be eradicated. Too many apologists see the tumor and think that because it's a living entity it deserves a continued existence--even as it spreads and devours the host.
Posted by: Dar ||
07/19/2005 11:11 Comments ||
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Sayyed Wild Abah
In the aftermath of the terrorist bombings in London, the usual analysis on the roots of extremism and terrorism, focusing on the socio-economic causes of violence, was repeated across the city.
It's a mantra: "O-o-o-o-om mane padme root causes cycle of despotism globalization violence maginalization injustice poverty oppression hu-u-u-u-um..."
Terror, according to this framework, is best understood as a reflection of a deep crisis in society, caused by poverty, a lack of opportunity and institutional support, in addition to social restrictions.
That's what I just said... errr... chanted.
A number of commentators ascribed to this line of thoughts so as not to provoke Muslims and associate terrorism with Islam.
Cert'nly not! The Lutherans do the same thing. You just don't hear about it very often...
Others agreed in the spirit of the moment.
"Yup. Yup. We agree."
Undoubtedly, this framework is popular with socio-political analysts and is based on a number of strong arguments. No one can deny that poverty, marginalization, despotism, and injustice are factors that contribute to the spread of extremism.
Just chanting it makes it so. Do it enough times and you can levitate or put nails through your butt cheeks and not feel a thing...
Yet, a closer examination of the backgrounds and actions of this new breed of terrorists, especially al Qaeda and similar groups, reveals a new reality that can not be accounted for by the above analysis.
What? A new ingredient in the sociological soup? How can that be?
It is well known that the suicide bombers who attacked US cities on September 11, 2001 were the sons of well to do families.
Yeah, but they knew people who were marginalized and oppressed by globalized despots. Well, they knew of them anyway...
They were Western-educated and specialized in the latest technologies which enabled them to use their knowledge of communications to commit heinous violence.
And they call us a consumer society! Islam can't invent all those latest technologies, but, boy! Can they figure ways to make them explode!
The fact is those who solely follow the socio-economic framework of analysis are mistaken; they believe that honesty and objectivity are exclusive to the intellectual class, while extremism and violence are popular amongst those who are unable to think for themselves and therefore easily succumb to fundamentalism.
There's so much wrong with that single sentence that it may be causing the lobes of my brain to separate. First, it assumes the existence of an "intellectual class," and assigns to it the ability to think for itself. Now, I don't doubt the existence of the turtleneck and Gaulloise set in Europe, and certainly we've seen them turn out for Susan Sontag's funeral here. I'm sure the Islamic world has its equivalent â the embroidered burnoose and antique narghileh set? â as well. But I'd also venture to say that here in the civilized world there's a rather largish class (not in the Marxist sense, though) of people who might be considered part-timers at the intellect game. Most of us whose undergraduate days are behind us managed to wade through enough Camus and Sartre and Hegel and those kinds of guys to at least pick up the general idea, and many of us can even recall Kirkegaard's first name, given enough time and maybe a hint or two. We read, then promptly forgot, what Bishop Berkeley had to say and we know that Descartes thought, and that if he hadn't we'd never have heard of him. So we have an intellectual grounding, too. Those of us who didn't go on to get Ph.D.s in Ph. then moved on to things of slightly more utility, which includes getting a degree in Phys Ed. or a ticket as an electrician. But we still know all about all this thinking stuff.
The other end of the postulated spectrum â and notice the missing 80 percent where the middle of the bell curve should be â consists of the Islamic equivalent of the cliche Alabama trailer park denizen, given to his beer (or in the Islamic case, religion), guns, beating his wife, and in general ready to fly off the deep end for no good reason, just because his holy man tells him to. Now, as anyone who's ever been to a trailer park can tell you, there are people just like that to be found there, but they're the ones who occupy the lower ten percent of the trailer park bell curve, while the middle to other 90 percent are perfectly normal folks, who're perfectly capable of thinking for themselves, some of whom could whip out Kirkegaard's first name from memory without even hesitating. We can tell that the group that's ready to erupt exists â we see them at every MMA rally in Lahore or Multan, just as we see them in the occasional riot when the Lakers or the Red Sox lose, and sometimes when they win. But we also regard them as socially retarded shitkickers.
Having pointed out the hole in the author's worldview, we can now move on to the meat of the argument...
Two aspects of this line of thought immediately stand out:
1- A critical arrogance or the view that the masses, by their nature, are gullible, irrational and receptive to extremist ideas.
Good for him. He saw the hole. I still have problems with his terminology, since here in the good old U.S.A. we're fresh out of masses. We have plumbers, electricians, carpenters, salespeople of thousands of varieties, farmers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, factory workers, politicians, cowboys, laborers, cooks, dish washers, firemen, policemen, and what have you, none of whom consider themselves to be "the masses." None of us are faceless, even while those who presume to be our intellectual betters attempts to ascribe facelessness to us. Having lived among the faceless masses in a number of non-Western countries, I can attest to the fact that each and every member of the masses does indeed have a face. They don't even all look alike. Not only do they have faces, but they have Moms and Dads, aspirations, goals, things they'd like to accomplish in their short, brutish lives, which tend to be short and brutish because they're ruled (not governed) by their "intellectual" betters. These people tell stories, crack jokes, get into fist fights, make love, holler at their kids, and sometimes even go bowling. I think it's both a shame and a mistake to underestimate them.
According to this perspective, the masses are unable to act reasonably and objectively as they are motivated by myth and imagination. They are accustomed to depravity and exploitation. As such, it is for the intellectual class, as the sole guardian of reason and logic, to create the social and economic conditions that will assist the masses.
Which is where we come up with the approach of ruling them, rather than governing.
2- A nihilist tendency or the loss of hope regarding attempts at social reform and the tacit acceptance of repression, exploitation, and despotism in Western societies.
I'm having difficulty with the idea of "repression, exploitation, and despotism" being ascribed to Western societies. "Kow-tow" is a Chinese word, and the practice itself was a lot more common in Eastern societies than in the West. Alexander's men were royally cheesed when he tried to introduce the practice to his court; honest Greek hoplites found such bowing and scraping to be beneath their dignity. Arabs, a thousand years later, took to it pretty readily.
Both aspects are found in philosophical treatises, from Plato and al Farabi to Foucault and Derida.
I'm not familiar with al Farabi, but Plato's vision of the perfect society was a.) unworkable, and b.) hideous. Foucault can only be comprehended while wearing a turtleneck and smoking a Gaulloise, so his postmodern opinion can be discounted. Give me time and I'll come up with something memorable that Derida said, and maybe even his first name...
What happens when bigoted and extremist sentiments grow amongst the privileged few?
They find an audience easier than the bigoted and extremist guy with the same idea down at the bowling ally...
This is a provocative question. The evidence before our eyes suggests that the indoctrination and destructive ideologies that have terrorized the world in recent years are held by members of the elite.
Bingo! When the guys down at the bowling ally get out of line the cops jug them. When they've got tenure they hold press conferences.
It is easy to forget that rationality, in itself, doesnât protect against extremism and fundamentalism.
It's also easy to forget that rationality isn't the exclusive province of intellectuals. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that because of their isolation from the common herd with their teevees and bowling allies and company picnics and firemen's parades, the intellects are probably less likely to be rational than the guy rounding up the carts at the grocery store. Not that I want to go to the other illogical extreme and Aaron Copeland the Common Manâ¢, who's capable of just as much stoopidity and venom as anyone else. I'm just pointing out that he's also capable of just as much TRVTH⢠and Beauty⢠as anyone else. It depends on the person, which is a view that allows for individuality for everyone, and the circumstances, which says merely that the guy who loans you his hedge clippers on Saturday may attempt to attack you with a chainsaw on Tuesday, assuming in the meantime you ran over his dog and off with his wife.
In fact, it is sometimes the most effective tool to legitimize tyranny and inequality.
What is? I got so wrapped in in what I was saying I forgot what he was saying...
Nietzsche believed as much and Foucault analyzed the relationship between power and knowledge.
"Golly, gosh!" he said, rocking on the front porch of his trailer house. "Nobody'd never done that before!"
In fact, the brightest minds in the history of human thought have, for the most part, supported authoritarianism and justified repression.
Whoa! Hold it! Stop! Halt! Cease and desist!... Just because they tell you they're the brightest minds in the history of human thought doesn't mean they actually are. Don't believe everything you read... No. Wait. I didn't mean that. Really. Now, read this carefully: "Put $500,000 into the Rantburg Pay-Pal account by Thursday evening or Descartes will cease to have existed." It's up to you, pal...
The founder of philosophy, Plato, was known for his attacks on Athenian democracy which he sought to replace with the dictatorship of the philosophers. The rational Mutazilites who supported the interpretation of the Quran persecuted their opponents and, while Sufis were being persecuted for their opinions, the philosophers of Islam, such as al Frabi, Avicenna, and Averroes enjoyed the privileges of their association with Islamic rulers. This model applies to the Western world as well as the life of the founder of modern philosophy Descartes reveals.
I hope you're getting the money together if you want to keep that paragraph...
Recent information has shed light on the intimate relations between some of the most prominent German thinkers and the racist extremist Nazi ideology, Heidegger being a prime example.
So what you're saying is that the very brightest minds the world has ever seen have all come up with totalitarianism in one form or another as the end result of their ponderings. It's the non-intellectual dullards, men like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, Lincoln, Jefferson, and John C. Calhoun, who come up with other approachs to ordering the world that didn't involve jackboots and massive rallies, approaches that are inferior in some respect to totalitarianism. Then you can throw in the guys like Jonson, who were more concerned with getting laid, Wang Wei, more concerned with getting drunk, and the guys like Lin Yu Tang who weren't even singing from the same sheet of music, and discard them all. I can follow that. I can't agree, but I can follow it.
Things are no different in the Arab World.
"Worse" and "different" aren't the same thing.
I was astounded, during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, to hear one of the most widely read Arab intellectuals justify Baghdadâs actions as âthe sacred violence that will usher in a new Arab renaissance.â
Sounds like something Normal al-Mailer wrote while wearing a turtleneck and smoking something other than a Gaulloise. There was a lot of that going around at the time. Ad-Dusour called it a "glorious Arab stand," if I recall correctly. Sometimes you do things today and don't think about how they're going to look tomorrow or ten or fifteen years from now.
It is wrong to assume that the roots of extremism lie in the masses and their erroneous beliefs, as Mohammed Arkoun says, basing his arguments on shaky anthropological premises.
Nope. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. But if you lead a herd to water, statistically a certain number are going to drink, and a smaller number within that number are going to gorge. Selah. It is written. Someplace, anyway. You could look it up...
Even if terrorist groups are supported by the masses, from time to time, they remain separated from the lower classes because of their elitist approach and their intellectual notions. These groups are also distinguished from religious elements who are mostly peace loving members of society.
Depends on the religious elements. If you're talking about Capuchin monks, that's a true statement. If you're talking about Islamic holy men, that's a different creature entirely. Some few are holy men in something approaching the western mold. A significant number are much more like cogs in a machine, the ruthless and scheming minions of some other holy man, or a group of holy men, or someone â like Binny or Zark â who presents himself as being not only ever so holy, but also in possession of all the answers.
Had it not been for isolated efforts to explain extremist positions as a reaction to Western foreign policy, extremist groups would have lacked any support from the masses.
There would always have been a certain amount of support. See horses analogy, above.
Intellectuals usually play two roles in society: they criticize society and contribute to building its foundation. The first responsibility is crucial to undermine dogma and combat idleness. The second is very dangerous and can, unfortunately, lead to a rise in fundamentalist ideologies and extremist thought that inevitably lead to exclusion, repression, and violence.
The danger for intellectuals as a class extend far beyond that. Their most common failing is to take themselves much too seriously. The second most common is to assume that because they're thinking, they're comprehending, considering all the angles, understanding human nature, assessing accurately the way the world works. That's the failing in Marx, and it's been the failing in each and every other "profound" thinker, with the possible exception of Hayek, who built his world view on the basis of not being able to comprehend all the factors and being less able to manipulate them even if he could. I'd go on to the next most common failing, but I don't want to sit here all day and discuss common failings until I run out of numbers. Practice trumps theory each and every time, regardless of how profound the theoretician.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/19/2005 00:19 ||
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#1
Bravo! Well Said!!!
and does this describe our own democratic party...or what???
A critical arrogance or the view that the masses, by their nature, are gullible, irrational and receptive to extremist ideas. According to this perspective, the masses are unable to act reasonably and objectively as they are motivated by myth and imagination. They are accustomed to depravity and exploitation. As such, it is for the intellectual class, as the sole guardian of reason and logic, to create the social and economic conditions that will assist the masses. 2. - A nihilist tendency or the loss of hope regarding attempts at social reform and the tacit acceptance of repression, exploitation, and despotism in Western societies.
#3
This analysis, which contradicts the usual socialist groupthink, still uses the verbose structure and dangling clause style of socialist writings.
As in the following,
A critical arrogance or the view that the masses, by their nature, are gullible, irrational and receptive to extremist ideas. According to this perspective, the masses are unable to act reasonably and objectively as they are motivated by myth and imagination. They are accustomed to depravity and exploitation. As such, it is for the intellectual class, as the sole guardian of reason and logic, to create the social and economic conditions that will assist the masses.I guess you can take socialism out of the rhetorical style but you can't take the rhetorical style out of the former socialist.
#4
A critical arrogance or the view that the masses, by their nature, are gullible, irrational and receptive to extremist ideas. According to this perspective, the masses are unable to act reasonably and objectively as they are motivated by myth and imagination. They are accustomed to depravity and exploitation. As such, it is for the intellectual class, as the sole guardian of reason and logic, to create the social and economic conditions that will assist the masses.
Holy Shit! They have plagiarized the Democrat's mantra! They have stolen the modern socialist dogma! They have...... what have they done?
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