On Monday, I linked to and we discussed this article by Haroon Moghul. Today, he's on a new Bloggingheads. Topics:
The revolution in Egypt is not Islamic A primer on the Muslim Brotherhood The Brotherhood in America Conservatives fight against Islamic organizations in the US What Shariah is and isn’t How Egypt could reduce American Islamophobia
I haven't listened yet, but I was impressed by the article and am interested in hearing him questioned about it.
ADDED: Moghul's interlocutor is Sarah Posner, who has written about "The Roots of the American Right’s Muslim Brotherhood Panic." Yesterday, I listened to Rush Limbaugh (which I always do) and watched Glenn Beck (which I'd never done for more than 5 minutes) and thought they were making overconfident statements about things they were only guessing about.
1) The political Islamism that ended up triumphing in Iran was a much more authoritarian interpretation of Islam....
2) Iran’s Islamist opposition to the Shah was shaped by the peculiarities of Shi’a Islam and Iranian history....
3) People who study Iran know how vexed the relationship is, and has been, between Persian cultural identity and Islam. While many Iranians before the revolution were religious in a non-political way, the country’s elite tended to see Islam and Persianness as mutually incompatible. On the other hand, Egypt is a proudly Arab society... which has never seen Islam as incompatible with their specific ethnic and national project....
4) Egypt’s revolution doesn’t have to be Islamic because Islam isn’t at the heart of the problem on the ground.... Egypt’s society is a deeply Muslim one, and the very success of this non-political religious project has negated the need for a confrontational Islam. Egyptians know their religious identity is not under threat....
As an aside, I might also add that Muslim societies often have flourishing religious institutions and practices, organic and varied. But in the case of Iran, the regime paradoxically undermined that popular and organic religiosity when they sought to enforce faith through the state. This is an argument for keeping religion and politics separate in the Muslim world: in the interest of defending both from the negative effects of the other....
Interesting. I hope it's true. That last insight — valuing the separation of religion and politics to defend each from the negative effects of the other — has been fundamental to the separation of religion and government in American history. (Read James Madison, Roger Williams, and all the rest.)
According to the survey, majorities in Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan and Nigeria would favor changing current laws to allow stoning as a punishment for adultery, hand amputation for theft and death for those who convert from Islam to another religion. About 85% of Pakistani Muslims said they would support a law segregating men and women in the workplace.
Muslims in Indonesia, Egypt, Nigeria and Jordan were among the most enthusiastic, with more than three-quarters of poll respondents in those countries reporting positive views of Islam's influence in politics: either that Islam had a large role in politics, and that was a good thing, or that it played a small role, and that was bad....
“While defendants contend that the amendment is merely a choice of law provision that bans state courts from applying the law of other nations or cultures, regardless of what faith they may be based on, if any, the actual language of the amendment reasonably, and perhaps more reasonably, may be viewed as specifically singling out Shariah law, conveying a message of disapproval of plaintiff’s faith,” the judge wrote.
... Scott Boughton, an assistant attorney general for the state, defended the measure, saying it was only intended to keep Oklahoma judges from looking at the legal principles of other nations and cultures in applying state and federal law. When the judge asked if that had ever happened in Oklahoma, Mr. Boughton acknowledged that he did not know of an instance in which Shariah law had been invoked by the courts....
It is thought the girl, who lives in the Sandwell Council area, was allegedly filmed setting the booklet alight while other pupils watched.
Booklet?
It is understood that the group who published that version of the Koran have since been to the school to talk to pupils.
Were Korans distributed by public school officials? Under what circumstances? If you want a book to be treated with respect, don't hand it out free to teenagers. Maybe the school officials should be arrested.
Bob Badham, Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council cabinet member for education, said he had visited the school and believed the atmosphere was generally good among pupils. He added that he did not believe there was a "deeper problem" in the area.
Is contempt for religious indoctrination a "deeper problem" that government should concern itself with? I think the deeper problem is that government officials in the U.K. seem to have lost touch with basic principles of freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
The amendment would require Oklahoma courts to "rely on federal and state law when deciding cases" and "forbids courts from considering or using" either international law or Islamic religious law, known as Sharia, which the amendment defined as being based on the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed.
In bringing suit, CAIR argued that the amendment violates both the establishment and free-exercise clauses of the First Amendment's guarantee of religious freedom. Awad has said the amendment passed "under a campaign of fearmongering" about Islam.
"According to Afghanistan's constitution, if there is no clear verdict as to whether an act is criminal or not in the penal code of the Afghan Constitution, then it would be referred to sharia law where the judge has an open hand in reaching a verdict," [said Qamaruddin Shenwari, director of the Kabul courts' north zone.]
Under sharia law, converting from Islam to Christianity is punishable by death.
"It is deeply troubling that a country we helped liberate would hold a person to account because they chose a particular religion over another.
"I'm troubled when I hear, deeply troubled when I hear, the fact that a person who converted away from Islam may be held to account. That's not the universal application of the values that I talked about. I look forward to working with the government of that country to make sure that people are protected in their capacity to worship."
Bush was talking about Abdul Rahman, who soon thereafter obtained his freedom.
[S]he had been working as a farmhand in fields with other women, when she was asked to fetch drinking water.
Some of the other women – all Muslims – refused to drink the water as it had been brought by a Christian and was therefore "unclean"...
The incident was forgotten until a few days later when [Asia] Bibi said she was set upon by a mob. The police were called and took her to a police station for her own safety.
Shahzad Kamran, of the Sharing Life Ministry Pakistan, said: "The police were under pressure from this Muslim mob, including clerics, asking for Asia to be killed because she had spoken ill of the Prophet Mohammed.
"So after the police saved her life they then registered a blasphemy case against her." He added that she had been held in isolation for more than a year before being sentenced to death on Monday.
The Juan Williams moment, prompted by Bill O'Reilly, who just a few days earlier, had this immensely more dramatic-looking moment on "The View":
I got to the Juan Williams video via Donald Sensing (via Instapundit). Sensing has old quotes from Jesse Jackson and Susan Estrich, who both conceded that black men make them anxious in some situations. Jackson's painful admission was that he feels "relieved" when he's walking down the street, hears someone behind him, and looks back and sees that they're white. Estrich said:
Every woman I know, black, white, green or yellow, gets a little bit nervous, if she’s being honest, when she sees an 18-25 year-old black guy dressed in gang attire, walking behind her on the street. I’m not afraid of old black men. I’m not afraid of old white men.
She purports to speak for all women, but limits the nervousness to encounters with "an 18-25 year-old black guy dressed in gang attire, walking behind her on the street." It's funny to see those 2 quotes together. Jackson describes the realistic situation of hearing someone behind you and looking back to see who it is. Estrich too has the person walking behind her, but somehow the nervousness is restricted to the young black man in gang clothes. Her political correctness made her layer in extra details, but if the guy is behind you, you don't see him yet. Were you not nervous just to have someone following you? The supposed revelation of feelings doesn't really add up, which makes the phrase "if she’s being honest" particularly telling.
Now, if Jackson and Estrich could say that, how was Williams different? Actually, there are a lot of differences. I won't try to list them all. But I don't assume that Jackson and Estrich got a free pass for saying what they said. And Williams has gotten a ton of support. It's not all about treating Muslims with more delicacy than black people receive. One thing about Williams is that he made himself available to Bill O'Reilly and gave him support and comfort. I think many people wanted to use that "View" fracas to demonize O'Reilly for good. And then Williams sat down on camera to shine a glow of humanity on the man the good people would have us see as monstrous. And so it became necessary to demonize Williams too.
... I don’t expect Juan Williams to support me (he’s said some tough things about me in the past) – but I will always support his right and the right of all Americans to speak honestly about the threats this country faces. And for Juan, speaking honestly about these issues isn’t just his right, it’s his job. Up until yesterday, he was doing that job at NPR. Firing him is their loss.
If NPR is unable to tolerate an honest debate about an issue as important as Islamic terrorism, then it’s time for “National Public Radio” to become “National Private Radio.” It’s time for Congress to defund this organization.
Mr. O’Reilly said, “The cold truth is that in the world today jihad, aided and abetted by some Muslim nations, is the biggest threat on the planet.”
Mr. Williams said he concurred with Mr. O’Reilly.
He continued: “I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”
Mr. Williams also made reference to the Pakistani immigrant who pleaded guilty this month to trying to plant a car bomb in Times Square. “He said the war with Muslims, America’s war is just beginning, first drop of blood. I don’t think there’s any way to get away from these facts,” Mr. Williams said.
NPR said in its statement that the remarks “were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR.”
Williams managed to be a commentator on both NPR and Fox for quite a while, but I guess it was just too much to see him feeding red meat to O'Reilly just a few days after O'Reilly enraged Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg over the very same subject. These news media — Fox and NPR — want the image they want, and Williams did a great job, fitting into both templates for as long as he did.
I suspect the powers-that-be at NPR pretty much think what Juan thinks. But the standards of political correctness must be maintained. Pressure groups speaking for allegedly offended Muslims must be propitiated. And so Juan had to go.
Williams' trite attempt to glorify his bigotry as anti-P.C. Speaking of the Truth is inane, as his remarks were suffused with falsehoods...
Whether these latest comments were merely the opportunity they [NPR] were looking for to terminate their relationship with him, or whether it was caused solely by these disgusting comments, is unclear. But what is clear is that the anti-Muslim bigotry he spewed is both the proximate and cited cause....
And so on.
Williams is now free of the need to preserve his relationship with NPR. I'm pretty interested to hear what he'll say now that he's shaken off the chains of PC-radio. Talk to us, Juan!
(Whatever happened to refusing to comment on issues that might reach the Court in real cases? Or is that just get-through-the-Judiciary-Committee blather?)
ADDED: What scares me is the thought that, if Justice Breyer had heard cheers at the hint that he might protect the feelings of Muslims over the free speech of Rev. Jones, he would have gone the other way.
[O]n the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is... moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity... in effect, being put into a witness-protection program—except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab. It's all because of the appalling fatwa issued against her this summer, following her infamous "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" cartoon.
Terrible. My heart goes out to you, Molly, even though I was always opposed to the "everybody draw Mohammed" approach to protesting the threats against the cartoonists who had drawn Muhammad. I believe strongly in free speech rights, but I think people should, in deciding how to exercise their rights, think about the effect their speech has on others who don't deserve to be offended. I imagine (and hope) that Molly is drawing her adventures and telling her story in what will be a widely read comic book. She has a charming drawing style and a nice sense of humor — plus the panache of unjust persecution and danger. Good luck!
ADDED: There's a big Metafilter thread about it, which I'm reading after writing that. A surprising number of people are blaming Norris for bringing the death threats on herself.
As a consequence of his proposal to build a mosque 2 blocks from Ground Zero, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has become quite famous — specifically famous for his assurances of moderation and his asserted desire to promote intercultural connection and harmony. You can doubt his motives or be suspicious of whether he's really at heart all that moderate. But the fact remains: He's world famous for his moderation now, and he's going to have to stick to it. That's great, isn't it?
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf promised on Monday to resolve the fierce dispute around plans to build a Muslim community center and mosque two blocks from ground zero, while noting that he does not believe the spot chosen for the center is “hallowed ground.”
Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations, he promised to find a way out of the current impasse around the planned center, which opponents say is insensitive to the memory of 9/11 and which supporters say sends the opposite message, that Muslims, like other Americans, object to and were victims of the attacks.
“Everything is on the table,” he said. “We really are focused on solving it” in a way that will be best for everyone concerned, he added. “I give you my pledge.”
He may not have meant to get himself into this position. But he's now the designated moderate imam. He's pretty much going to have to play out his role, and it's great to have someone in that role. Is he the one who deserves all this attention? Is he all that well suited to speak for others and follow through as a force for moderation? Who knows? But he's here now, and circumstances have bestowed this prominence and responsibility on him. It will be exceedingly difficult for him to back out of it now. He will have to be the man events have chosen him to be. And we need that man.
Surely, you haven't read them all. I'm not going to weigh them down just yet with a lot of new material on top. I'd rather call attention to the 2 posts about the small-time Florida pastor who captured the attention of the entire world — with the help of a lot of foolish journalists and the President of the United States.
Obama propounds the stereotype of irrational Muslims who resort to acts of violence when they don't like what people are saying.
Ironically, Rev. Jones wanted to burn the Koran because it seemed to him that it "incites radical, violent behavior among Muslims." And Obama wanted Jones to refrain from burning the Koran because it would incite radical, violent behavior among Muslims.
And here's a picture in the NYT showing a bunch of men posing in the embarrassing stereotype that the President isn't ashamed to use.
