War and peace and Islam

[Haydnseek]

War and peace and Islam
Theo Hobson

http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php? ... 2005-07-23

Forget your mental image of a sociology professor. David Martin, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the LSE, is a softly spoken conservative Anglican. His critique of the concept of secularisation, begun in the 1960s, brought a new rigour to the study of religion in Britain, and established a flourishing conversation between sociology and theology.

Inevitably, we begin with the issue of the hour: Islam and violence. Professor Martin does not settle for the easy mantra that all religions are naturally peaceful. Instead, choosing his words very carefully, and pausing to ask whether his comments are printable, he tells me what he thinks.

‘I wish that I could sound more positive, but the bombings don’t come as any surprise to me. There is a deeply rooted ideology of violence in Islam — a military psychology. Of course most Muslims don’t want to go around bombing people, but those few who do turn to violence are able to find a certain amount of justification in the Koran. I suppose that might not be the most helpful thing to say, but it seems undeniable.’

Is it not a religion of peace? ‘Well, it seeks peace, but on its own terms. As Rowan Williams has said, it’s a fine religion, but it places a high premium on victory. And I think that’s right, and I fear that many young men will see violence as the means to that victory. There’s a large enough mood of militancy in Islam for it to be a real problem. And that’s not just a recent thing caused by resentment over Iraq and Afghanistan: it’s been emerging over several decades throughout the Middle East and Pakistan.’

Does Islam find it harder than other religions to reform, to incorporate secular liberal values? ‘The problem is that it came into contact with the modern world very fast, so it reacts with horror at the sheer range of options in secularism. That seems like confusion and chaos when your tradition is based on a single right way of behaving and strong warnings against the infidel. The Koran is a very “us and them” book. It’s hard to see how a Muslim school dominated by the Koran can encourage assimilation, and can promote the idea of equality between the sexes, for example.

‘But I’m not entirely pessimistic. Islam does have a strong peace-loving element and it’s obviously a good thing when that’s emphasised. A process of selectivity does go on in any religious tradition, and so it’s good that Islam presents itself as a religion of peace that condemns the killing of the innocent. Another thing that emerges from the London bombings is the futility of trying to destroy the infidel — because some of the victims were Muslim.’

Martin had a strict Methodist upbringing, which evolved into radical pacifism. ‘I came to see religion and politics as inseparable. For me the Kingdom of God and the pacifist wing of the Labour party were roughly the same thing.’ But when he came to study this pacifist tradition he began to doubt it. ‘I concluded that it just didn’t work. I found that Reinhold Niebuhr’s political realism made much more sense. Utopian visions end up in a mess. But that left me with the question of what the gospels were about; so I had to make sense of how the utopian vision relates to the real world.’

He began teaching the sociology of religion at the LSE in the early 1960s, and quickly found himself at odds with the secular-progressive bias of the discipline, preferring the liberal conservatism of Edward Shils, S.M. Lipset and Daniel Bell. The student radicalism of the later 1960s confirmed his suspicion of the Left. ‘I didn’t particularly care for having my life thrown into disarray — I was running the graduate department at that time. One evening they took over the building and tried me for being on their premises, and they smashed the windows as well.’

His work became centred on rethinking the concept of secularisation. ‘There was a simplistic assumption that once upon a time there was religion; some time in the future there will be complete secularity. It’s a one-track philosophy of history that has some evidence for it, but it pulls the evidence towards it, like iron filings. If you look more closely you find huge variations according to where you are in the world.’ He proposed a more nuanced, careful account of secularisation in which religion doesn’t disappear, but moves away from being the core element in a society towards being an autonomous, or semi-autonomous, sector of society.

In the late 1970s Martin shifted his allegiance from Methodism to Anglicanism. In his mid-fifties he decided to become a priest and studied at Westcott House in Cambridge. In 1984 he was ordained. Does he retain any suspicion of an established Church? ‘It has become clear that this institutional model may be unsustainable in the long run. But that doesn’t bother me very much. Everyone lives in some kind of imbalance, or imperfect fit. Just imagine people in the Church of Rome who don’t agree with the official teaching. For me the Church of England is not so much about a symbolic state connection as about a continuity in a place.’

A major theme of Martin’s writing is its fascination with the contradiction of the Church: it is a worldly institution, with murky political attachments, yet it exists to convey a message of absolute peace. ‘The message of peace is carried and maintained through an ecclesiastical institution implicated in state violence. The radical imagery of peace, love and universal fraternity is not directly put into practice. The sectarian tradition sometimes tries to do so, but its attempts are short-lived. The problem is that politics are about force. So a new sort of compromise with power will arise.’

It sounds rather a bleak view, a tragic vision? ‘Oh, absolutely. International relations are a form of organised chaos in which violence is the arbiter. Politics is a very savage business. If the Church is to be involved in politics it can’t take a totally purist line and reject all use of force. I don’t think the Archbishop of Canterbury can address the Prime Minister from a pulpit and tell him his foreign policy is un-Christian, because politicians are there to try to secure the national interest, not to turn the other cheek.’

So is history the site of tragedy rather than hope? ‘What I think that Christianity does is to scatter a set of seeds in society — and these partly grow in the iconography of the Church, partly in the sectarian tradition, and partly in culture at large. And they fructify in different ways, as potential ideals.

‘What sets Christianity apart is its suspicion of all human power. In Judaism and Islam there is a willingness to celebrate military glory, and to depict war heroes as martyrs. Christianity can’t accept this. It insists that faith is something other than successful violence for a cause.’ In these nervous times, it is rare to find a thinker who dares to depict Christianity as the supreme ‘religion of peace’ among the monotheisms. Would a bishop be so impolitic?

David Martin’s latest book, On Secularization, is published by Ashgate.

[BWV 1080]

Good article and a good refutation why the incessent claims in the media of any sort of parity between the Fundementalist Pentacostal Preacher and Osama Bin Laden are so ridiculous.

[Barry]

Good article and a good refutation why the incessent claims in the media of any sort of parity between the Fundementalist Pentacostal Preacher and Osama Bin Laden are so ridiculous.

I've heard such comparisons much more often in my personal interactions with people either on message boards or in person than I have in the media.

It's of course a ridiculous comparison in terms of proportionality. Fundamentalists don't pose a threat to our lives, and Islamic extremists are even more restrictive and backward on cultural issues than are Fundamentalists.

But that doesn't mean the concerns of those who oppose the Fundamentalist Christian agenda are unfounded or that they're wrong to speak up about it just as aggressively and forcefully as the Fundamentalists push for their side.

[Modernistfan]

Fundamentalists don't pose a threat to our lives? Please do not try to tell that to, for example, the family and friends of Dr. Barnett Slepian, the MD who was murdered a few years ago by anti-abortion fanatics. I think that what is happening is that we are so overcome with revulsion at Islamic extremism that we are beginning to overlook other kinds that can be dangerous to us as well.

[Barry]

Fundamentalists don't pose a threat to our lives? Please do not try to tell that to, for example, the family and friends of Dr. Barnett Slepian, the MD who was murdered a few years ago by anti-abortion fanatics. I think that what is happening is that we are so overcome with revulsion at Islamic extremism that we are beginning to overlook other kinds that can be dangerous to us as well.

You're of course right that those who bomb abortion clinics or murder abortion-performing doctors are depraved. But these are a few isolated instances. There is no mass movement of Fundamentalists who turn to physical violence and terror attacks to further their cause as there is with Islamic extremists. And the few Fundamentalists who do turn to violence are pursued and presecuted to the full extent of the law, as they should be. There is no need to call out the military to deal with Fundamentalists.

[Ted]

Hey
Let me say these two words:
Even Balance
When it comes to religion, (or virtually anything in life) but especially religion, the lack of it is a prescription for mayhem.
With a little more than 2000 years of Christianity and Islam behind us, we see today where the world’s two most popular religions have taken us.
Down the tubes..literally
Edited to include:
Let me modify that statement to note that I am referring to the fanatic elements of both groups—of which a few are too much

[Lilith]

Ted...you should have stuck with your original statement.

[Ted]

Ted...you should have stuck with your original statement.

And where would the “Even Balance” be in that?

While I agree that all religion is divisive and ultimately leads to fanaticism and murder, not all religious people are fanatics or murderers.

[Ralph]

Fundamentalists don't pose a threat to our lives? Please do not try to tell that to, for example, the family and friends of Dr. Barnett Slepian, the MD who was murdered a few years ago by anti-abortion fanatics. I think that what is happening is that we are so overcome with revulsion at Islamic extremism that we are beginning to overlook other kinds that can be dangerous to us as well.

*****

There is a difference between religious fundamentalists and zealots who will take life to further their agendas. America has always had both with the latter a dangerous but distinct minority. The abolition movement had John Brown and Eric Rudolf is the modern counterpart.

Fundamentalism in America spans a wide grouping including the Amish and the Hasids.

Fanatics who break the law here are hard to prepare against or stop unless they have a record and can be monitored. No one ever heard of Timothy McVeigh - a secular fundamentalist in his views of the Constitution - until after he wreaked havoc.

[Ralph]

Ted...you should have stuck with your original statement.

And where would the “Even Balance” be in that?

While I agree that all religion is divisive and ultimately leads to fanaticism and murder, not all religious people are fanatics or murderers.

*****

Your statement is way too broad. Most religions divide into subgroups the majority of which are fully assimilated into American life. While Hasids and ultra-Orthodox Jews make demands for accommodation that may be unconstitutional, they hurt no one. Most Jews, like most Christians do little if anything to foster societal divisiveness.

More fundamentalist sects like the Amish and Mennonites simply want to be as self-isolated as is reasonably possible. They threaten no one else's rights.

Ted, if you're in Westchester after Labor Day you're welcome to attend my once-a-week evening seminar on the First Amendment-Church and State.

[Ralph]

Fundamentalists don't pose a threat to our lives? Please do not try to tell that to, for example, the family and friends of Dr. Barnett Slepian, the MD who was murdered a few years ago by anti-abortion fanatics. I think that what is happening is that we are so overcome with revulsion at Islamic extremism that we are beginning to overlook other kinds that can be dangerous to us as well.

*****

To the best of my knowledge Dr. Slepian was murdered by one man although a husband and wife helped him to elude capture, a crime in itself. It's important not to spread too broad a brush with accusations on a very sensitive subject.

There is no evidence of a conspiracy to kill Dr. Slepian.

[Corlyss_D]

Fundamentalists don't pose a threat to our lives? Please do not try to tell that to, for example, the family and friends of Dr. Barnett Slepian, the MD who was murdered a few years ago by anti-abortion fanatics. I think that what is happening is that we are so overcome with revulsion at Islamic extremism that we are beginning to overlook other kinds that can be dangerous to us as well.

You're joking, right? You want to stand up one or two guys against a world wide movement and say, "they're all the same?" Get real. Sometimes I think you are downright irrational about people of faith, M.

[MartinPh]

Islamic extremism isn't a world-wide movement. It represents the actions of a very small minority among muslims, though unfortunately one that is extremely vicious and ('war on terror' or not) apparently still very well organized.

I agree that any form of organized religion is a sure recipe for misery, intolerance and bloodshed. People East and West ought to grow up and learn to deal with life without their infantile fantasies of some superdaddy in the sky.

[Ralph]

Islamic extremism isn't a world-wide movement. It represents the actions of a very small minority among muslims, though unfortunately one that is extremely vicious and ('war on terror' or not) apparently still very well organized.

I agree that any form of organized religion is a sure recipe for misery, intolerance and bloodshed. People East and West ought to grow up and learn to deal with life without their infantile fantasies of some superdaddy in the sky.

*****

Right, human nature is going to change in the early 21st Century.

[Haydnseek]

Islamic extremism isn't a world-wide movement. It represents the actions of a very small minority among muslims, though unfortunately one that is extremely vicious and ('war on terror' or not) apparently still very well organized.

Certainly it is a world-wide movement. Islamic terrorists have hit targets in the Middle and Near East, Indian sub-continent, Africa, Indonesia, The Philipines, China, Russia, Europe, and North America and local peoples often, maybe usually, did the acts. The terrorist training camps attracted people from all over the world and sent them back to kill.

That it is a minority of Muslims that are active in these organizations is clear but I think the jury is still out on the degree to which they are backed by popular support and state sponsors.

[Ralph]

The state support is there to a certain degree but the relative simplicity of the ordnance employed suggests that terrorist cells are much less dependent on training and logistical support from conventional forces than in the past.

Popular support is hard to gauge. Virulent anti-American feelings are widespread. Months after 9/11 one of my students, a Chinese woman who came here for college and later brought her parents over, visited relatives in Shanghai. She was shocked to discover the family went to a very expensive (for Chinese) restaurant to celebrate the attacks in the U.S. She told me that as a matter of pragmatism and courtesy Americans wouldn't and don't encounter hostility in China but that feelings against the U.S. are often deep. But...most Chinese she knows want to do business with the U.S.

I suspect that with Islamic nations feelings are less complex and conflicted by self-interest than in China.

[Haydnseek]

There are three things that are going to have to happen to solve this problem for good:

1. Repressive regimes must be replaced with democratic governments and more liberal economies so that citizens of Muslim countries have other things to occupy themselves with than nutty grievances. Irish terrorism weakened as the Irish economy become more dynamic. Who wanted to bother about whether the British were nasty to great-granny anymore when there was money to be made in High-Tech and the British were good customers?

2. Islam must be pressured into undergoing a reformation. This can happen. Religions have just decided to overlook inconvenient texts and outdated rules and conventions throughout history when the stress or incentives were great enough.

3. Western societies must get over the self-imposed restrictions of Political Correctness and insist on the assimilation of Muslims who are citizens and severely restrict new immigration. Islamic institutions have such strong political features that they should be treated differently than other religious establishments. They are different, and they may be incompatible with free societies as they are currently constituted.

[Werner]

I see uour point, but also a problem in trying to control religious practices.
I'm not arguing with you, but where do we draw a line?

The Mormons have a provision obligating their membership to proselytize con tinuously. It's not as violent as the extremist Muslim espansionism - but.....(not to mention the Seventh Day Adventists and many others.)

Perhaps we may see some opinions here by others?

[Haydnseek]

I see your point, but also a problem in trying to control religious practices. I'm not arguing with you, but where do we draw a line?

Very hard to do I admit. Maybe religious schools would be a place to start. Private schools must meet some standards if they are allowed to serve in place of a public education. Preaching Jihad and the non-humanity of non-believers in a school could be eliminated in exchange for accreditation. School books should be acceptable too. Make the standards high and restrictive. Shut them down if they transgress.

[Haydnseek]

And Then They Came After Us

We’re at war. How about acting like it?

Victor Davis Hanson
July 22, 2005, 8:16 a.m.

http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/ha ... 220816.asp

First the terrorists of the Middle East went after the Israelis. From 1967 we witnessed 40 years of bombers, child murdering, airline hijacking, suicide murdering, and gratuitous shooting. We in the West usually cried crocodile tears, and then came up with all sorts of reasons to allow such Middle Eastern killers a pass.

Yasser Arafat, replete with holster and rants at the U.N., had become a “moderate” and was thus free to steal millions of his good-behavior money. If Hamas got European cash, it would become reasonable, ostracize its “military wing,” and cease its lynching and vigilantism.
When some tried to explain that Wars 1-3 (1947, 1956, 1967) had nothing to do with the West Bank, such bothersome details fell on deaf ears.

When it was pointed out that Germans were not blowing up Poles to get back lost parts of East Prussia nor were Tibetans sending suicide bombers into Chinese cities to recover their country, such analogies were caricatured.

When the call for a “Right of Return” was making the rounds, few cared to listen that over a half-million forgotten Jews had been cleansed from Syria, Iraq, and Egypt, and lost billions in property.

When the U.N. and the EU talked about “refugee camps,” none asked why for a half-century the Arab world could not build decent housing for its victimized brethren, or why 1 million Arabs voted in Israel, but not one freely in any Arab country.

The security fence became “The Wall,” and evoked slurs that it was analogous to barriers in Korea or Berlin that more often kept people in than out. Few wondered why Arabs who wished to destroy Israel would mind not being able to live or visit Israel.

In any case, anti-Semitism, oil, fear of terrorism — all that and more fooled us into believing that Israel’s problems were confined to Israel. So we ended up with a utopian Europe favoring a pre-modern, terrorist-run, Palestinian thugocracy over the liberal democracy in Israel. The Jews, it was thought, stirred up a hornet’s nest, and so let them get stung on their own.

We in the United States preened that we were the “honest broker.” After the Camp David accords we tried to be an intermediary to both sides, ignoring that one party had created a liberal and democratic society, while the other remained under the thrall of a tribal gang.

Billions of dollars poured into frontline states like Jordan and Egypt. Arafat himself got tens of millions, though none of it ever seemed to show up in good housing, roads, or power plants for his people. The terror continued, enhanced rather than arrested, by Western largess and Israeli concessions.

Then the Islamists declared war on the United States. A quarter century of mass murdering of Americans followed in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, East Africa, the first effort to topple the World Trade Center, and the attack on the USS Cole.

We gave billions to Jordan, the Palestinians, and the Egyptians. Afghanistan was saved from the Soviets through U.S. aid. Kuwait was restored after Saddam’s annexation, and the holocaust of Bosnians and Kosovars halted by the American Air Force. Americans welcomed thousands of Arabs to our shores and allowed hundreds of madrassas and mosques to preach zealotry, anti-Semitism, and jihad without much scrutiny.

Then came September 11 and the almost instant canonization of bin Laden.

Suddenly, the prior cheap shots at Israel under siege weren’t so cheap. It proved easy to castigate Israelis who went into Jenin, but not so when we needed to do the same in Fallujah.

It was easy to slander the Israelis’ scrutiny of Arabs in their midst, but then suddenly a few residents in our own country were found to be engaging in bomb making, taking up jihadist pilgrimages to Afghanistan, and mapping out terrorist operations.

Apparently, the hatred of radical Islam was not just predicated on the “occupation” of the West Bank. Instead it involved the pretexts of Americans protecting Saudi Arabia from another Iraqi attack, the United Nations boycott of Iraq, the removal of the Taliban and Saddam, and always as well as the Crusades and the Reconquista.

But Europe was supposedly different. Unlike the United States, it was correct on the Middle East, and disarmed after the Cold War. Indeed, the European Union was pacifistic, socialist, and guilt-ridden about former colonialism.

Hundreds of thousands of Muslims were left alone in unassimilated European ghettoes and allowed to preach or promulgate any particular hatred of the day they wished. Conspire to kill a Salmon Rushdie, talk of liquidating the “apes and pigs,” distribute Mein Kampf and the Protocols, or plot in the cities of France and Germany to blow up the Pentagon and the World Trade Center — all that was about things “over there” and in a strange way was thought to ensure that Europe got a pass at home.

But the trump card was always triangulation against the United States. Most recently anti-Americanism was good street theater in Rome, Paris, London, and the capitals of the “good” West.

But then came Madrid — and the disturbing fact that after the shameful appeasement of its withdrawal from Iraq, further plots were hatched against Spanish justices and passenger trains.

Surely a Holland would be exempt — Holland of wide-open Amsterdam fame where anything goes and Muslim radicals could hate in peace. Then came the butchering of Theo Van Gogh and the death threats against parliamentarian Hirsi Ali — and always defiance and promises of more to come rather than apologies for their hatred.

Yet was not Britain different? After all, its capital was dubbed Londonistan for its hospitality to Muslims across the globe. Radical imams openly preached jihad against the United States to their flock as thanks for being given generous welfare subsidies from her majesty’s government. But it was the United States, not liberal Britain, that evoked such understandable hatred.

But now?

After Holland, Madrid, and London, European operatives go to Israel not to harangue Jews about the West Bank, but to receive tips about preventing suicide bombings. And the cowboy Patriot Act to now-panicked European parliaments perhaps seems not so illiberal after all.

So it is was becoming clear that butchery by radical Muslims in Bali, Darfur, Iraq, the Philippines Thailand, Turkey, Tunisia, and Iraq was not so tied to particular and “understandable” Islamic grievances.

Perhaps the jihadist killing was not over the West Bank or U.S. hegemony after all, but rather symptoms of a global pathology of young male Islamic radicals blaming all others for their own self-inflicted miseries, convinced that attacks on the infidel would win political concessions, restore pride, and prove to Israelis, Europeans, Americans — and about everybody else on the globe — that Middle Eastern warriors were full of confidence and pride after all.

Meanwhile an odd thing happened. It turns out that the jihadists were cowards and bullies, and thus selective in their targets of hatred. A billion Chinese were left alone by radical Islam — even though the Chinese were secularists and mostly godless, as well as ruthless to their own Uighur Muslim minorities. Had bin Laden issued a fatwa against Beijing and slammed an airliner into a skyscraper in Shanghai, there is no telling what a nuclear China might have done.

India too got mostly a pass, other than the occasional murdering by Pakistani zealots. Yet India makes no effort to apologize to Muslims. When extremists occasionally riot and kill, they usually cease quickly before the response of a much more unpredictable angry populace.

What can we learn from all this?

Jihadists hardly target particular countries for their “unfair” foreign policies, since nations on five continents suffer jihadist attacks and thus all apparently must embrace an unfair foreign policy of some sort.

Typical after the London bombing is the ubiquitous Muslim spokesman who when asked to condemn terrorism, starts out by deploring such killing, assuring that it has nothing to do with Islam, yet then ending by inserting the infamous “but” — as he closes with references about the West Bank, Israel, and all sorts of mitigating factors. Almost no secular Middle Easterners or religious officials write or state flatly, “Islamic terrorism is murder, pure and simple evil. End of story, no ifs or buts about it.”

Second, thinking that the jihadists will target only Israel eventually leads to emboldened attacks on the United States. Assuming America is the only target assures terrorism against Europe. Civilizations will either hang separately or triumph over barbarism together. It is that simple — and past time for Europe and the United States to rediscover their common heritage and shared aims in eradicating this plague of Islamic fascism.

Third, Islamicists are selective in their attacks and hatred. So far global jihad avoids two billion Indians and Chinese, despite the fact that their countries are far tougher on Muslims than is the United States or Europe. In other words, the Islamicists target those whom they think they can intimidate and blackmail.

Unfettered immigration, billions in cash grants to Arab autocracies, alliances of convenience with dictatorships, triangulation with Middle Eastern patrons of terror, blaming the Jews — civilization has tried all that.

It is time to relearn the lessons from the Cold War, when we saw millions of noble Poles, Romanians, Hungarians, and Czechs as enslaved under autocracy and a hateful ideology, and in need of democracy before they could confront the Communist terror in their midst.

But until the Wall fell, we did not send billions in aid to their Eastern European dictatorships nor travel freely to Prague or Warsaw nor admit millions of Communist-ruled Bulgarians and Albanians onto our shores.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His website is victorhanson.com.

[Ralph]

There are three things that are going to have to happen to solve this problem for good:

1. Repressive regimes must be replaced with democratic governments and more liberal economies so that citizens of Muslim countries have other things to occupy themselves with than nutty grievances. Irish terrorism weakened as the Irish economy become more dynamic. Who wanted to bother about whether the British were nasty to great-granny anymore when there was money to be made in High-Tech and the British were good customers?

2. Islam must be pressured into undergoing a reformation. This can happen. Religions have just decided to overlook inconvenient texts and outdated rules and conventions throughout history when the stress or incentives were great enough.

3. Western societies must get over the self-imposed restrictions of Political Correctness and insist on the assimilation of Muslims who are citizens and severely restrict new immigration. Islamic institutions have such strong political features that they should be treated differently than other religious establishments. They are different, and they may be incompatible with free societies as they are currently constituted.

*****

There are huge numbers of Muslims who like Orthodox Jews are assimilated into the economy and political structure of our society. I've had at least four Muslim women students in the past two years alone who wear a chador and their exam grades (and all exams are anonymously taken and graded) range near the top 25% or better.

Your third proposal is so clearly a violation of the First Amendment that it wouldn't survive any court.

[Haydnseek]

There are huge numbers of Muslims who like Orthodox Jews are assimilated into the economy and political structure of our society. I've had at least four Muslim women students in the past two years alone who wear a chador and their exam grades (and all exams are anonymously taken and graded) range near the top 25% or better.

Your third proposal is so clearly a violation of the First Amendment that it wouldn't survive any court.

Muslims have assimilated much more successfully in the US than in Europe. You could say assimilation is what we are all about. The US may be less at risk from domestic terrorism than Europe over the long run because of this.

European societies may be able to work with freer hands in restricting things like hate speech and indoctrination into political violence in religious institutions. Perhaps that is good or maybe it just opens a can of worms. I suppose I went over the top with my third proposal. Still Political Correctness is a system of socially-imposed restrictions on speech and action that has not been helpful in dealing with the threat of radical islam. You have to dance around the issue and pretend too much.

[Ralph]

There are huge numbers of Muslims who like Orthodox Jews are assimilated into the economy and political structure of our society. I've had at least four Muslim women students in the past two years alone who wear a chador and their exam grades (and all exams are anonymously taken and graded) range near the top 25% or better.

Your third proposal is so clearly a violation of the First Amendment that it wouldn't survive any court.

Muslims have assimilated much more successfully in the US than in Europe. You could say assimilation is what we are all about. The US may be less at risk from domestic terrorism than Europe over the long run because of this.

European societies may be able to work with freer hands in restricting things like hate speech and indoctrination into political violence in religious institutions. Perhaps that is good or maybe it just opens a can of worms. I suppose I went over the top with my third proposal. Still Political Correctness is a system of socially-imposed restrictions on speech and action that has not been helpful in dealing with the threat of radical islam. You have to dance around the issue and pretend too much.

*****

England and most European nations have laws dealing with hate speech that are anathema to U.S. Constitutional theory. My view is that it's their business, not ours. However, I stopped contributing to the Simon Wiesenthal Center because they openly endorsed and supported such laws and I won't see my money employed to that end.

[Barry]

Muslims have assimilated much more successfully in the US than in Europe. You could say assimilation is what we are all about.

Yes. That's my favorite thing about this country.

[Haydnseek]

England and most European nations have laws dealing with hate speech that are anathema to U.S. Constitutional theory. My view is that it's their business, not ours. However, I stopped contributing to the Simon Wiesenthal Center because they openly endorsed and supported such laws and I won't see my money employed to that end.

Yes, you start restricting speech for what seems a good reason and you don't know where it ends. What about the fact that if you say certain things in America that are considered "insensitive" to the feelings of members of certain groups you will lose your job and/or be sued? Isn't all that law about contributing to a "hostile work environment," etc. just a run around the first amendment to achieve the restriction of "hate speech?"

[Ralph]

England and most European nations have laws dealing with hate speech that are anathema to U.S. Constitutional theory. My view is that it's their business, not ours. However, I stopped contributing to the Simon Wiesenthal Center because they openly endorsed and supported such laws and I won't see my money employed to that end.

Yes, you start restricting speech for what seems a good reason and you don't know where it ends. What about the fact that if you say certain things in America that are considered "insensitive" to the feelings of members of certain groups you will lose your job and/or be sued? Isn't all that law about contributing to a "hostile work environment," etc. just a run around the first amendment to achieve the restriction of "hate speech?"

*****

Words can be the basis for the full commission of a crime. Examples include offering a bribe, threatening to kill someone, blackmail, making a false report to a government agency and conspiracy. That's just a few.

The First Amendment doesn't protect all speech from non-criminal sanctions. The law of Defamation - libel and slander - affords remedies for injurious falsehoods and the law of Privacy may also bring remedies for truthful statements that invade legally protected interests.

All law is, essentially, a balancing test between competing values. The right of a person to be able to work in a non-hostile environment can be violated by acts, speech or any combination. While some speech in the workplace may be shielded by the First Amendment (rarely), an employer has a duty, not just a right, to protect workers from sexual harassment. I see no threat to Free Speech in that branch of the law.

[Corlyss_D]

Islamic extremism isn't a world-wide movement. It represents the actions of a very small minority among muslims, though unfortunately one that is extremely vicious and ('war on terror' or not) apparently still very well organized.

More head-in-the-sand Eurobabble. You guys are next on the list, BTW, right behind or beside Italy.

[Corlyss_D]

'We Don't Need to Fight, We Are Taking Over!'

By Paul J. Cella Published 07/22/2005

The bombings two week ago in London concentrate the mind on three questions, all of them exceedingly difficult, and the first two of which profoundly complicate the all-important third.

"We don't need to fight. We are taking over!" ["Abdullah," a Muslim watch-mender and evangelist] said. "We are here to bring civilization to the West. England does not belong to the English people, it belongs to God."

The first difficult question is: Is this the authentic voice of Islam? And it is a question that no non-Muslim can presume to properly answer. If I answered, "Emphatically yes, this is the authentic voice of Islam: and it is also the voice of our enemy," men would rise in righteous anger at my presumption. But when our leaders -- non-Muslims to a man -- pronounce in solemn tones, just as confidently, "No; Islam is a religion of peace," there are no charges of presumption.

What we can say confidently, while yet avoiding the presumption, is that those who believe that "civilization" should be "brought" to us by the gruesome massacre of London commuters, or Spanish commuters, or New York office-workers, believe this because, over and above it, they believe the claims of Islam. In short, we non-Muslims (while we are still free to speak our minds) can appropriately say that our enemies strike against us in the name of Islam; they find their inspiration, their motivation, their justification, in the precepts of this great religion which has stood as the adversary of our once-unified civilization for many a long century. It may be that they have perverted the teachings of this religion; it may be that they have misunderstood some of its ambiguous teachings; but it may also be that they are faithfully applying those teachings. Again a non-Muslim is in no position to judge of this.

The second question goes to the very heart of the theoretical framework American leaders have sketched as a solution to the problems of the Muslim world. In brief, it calls into question the whole solution itself, and may force us back to the drawing broad, so to speak, if we are serious about facing it. The question is this. If it is demonstrated, as now seems pretty clear, that the perpetrators of the London bombings were British citizens or legal residents, will there be any reflection on what this means for the neoconservative theory that democracy is the cure for Islamic terrorism? If, in other words, the perpetrators of these bombings were citizens or long-time residents of one of the world's most stable and historic democracies, and thus partakers of all liberty and equality that is offered as the panacea for the troubles of the Muslim world, what does it say for the plausibility of said theory that London's first suicide bombers were reared up in the very cradle of Western liberal democracy?

Just maybe, it says that there is something unique about Islam that confounds our facile universalism, something unique and ancient about Islam that renders nugatory the easy platitudes so dear to us, something unique and ineradicable that reveals (yet again) that there are deeper things to stir the hearts of men than material prosperity and free elections.

But here is the really pulverizing question -- pulverizing not least because it is so muddled by the difficulty of the foregoing two. But being muddled, it is no less important. By now, every free nation in the world still possessed of its senses knows it must face this self-interrogation: Are we or are we not going permit (or perhaps continue to permit) the emergence, within our midst, of totalitarian Islam? Again I deliberately leave open the question of whether "totalitarian Islam" really means "Islam in the modern world" or merely "a perversion of Islam in the modern world." But to repeat: The people of the free nations of the world, the citizens of the West (or her descendents if in fact the West is no more), are now confronted with sufficient evidence that the efforts to call totalitarian Islam into existence in every free nation are well underway; that such efforts will be materially supported from the home bases of totalitarian Islam, and may be spiritually supported by the very nature of Islam as such*; and that those efforts can, at least to some degree, be encouraged or discouraged by the actions of our own governments.

The instinct of most of us is not even to face the question, to decline the self-interrogation altogether, and get on with our barbeques and reality shows; but face it we must, because ultimately the threat it signifies is neither fleeting nor mild, but rather persistent and existential.

The answer we should give is this. We -- whatever other free nations choose to do or not do -- are going to put certain considerable obstacles in the way of totalitarian Islam; we at least are not going to encourage its development on our shores; we at least are going to say, in the manner republics "say" things publicly, such that it is clear to the leaders of this movement, its sympathizers and facilitators, both here and abroad, to the world at large, and most importantly to ourselves, that we will not tolerate totalitarian Islam. Rather, we will place very substantial burdens and abridgements, of varying social, political and legal character, upon those holding the beliefs associated with totalitarian Islam. We will make the price for sympathy with it very high indeed. We will not extend to it our beloved constitutional and civil rights; we will not, to the extent possible, let its sympathizers and facilitators, much less its foot soldiers and officers, into our country, and we will deport with dispatch those already here; we will exclude its representatives from service in our government, status in our society, safety under our laws; we will, in short, prohibit totalitarian Islam, in thought, word and deed.

Now we will, to be sure, make every effort to distinguish between our real enemies and those merely linked to them by accident of birth or confession. We have always been a generous country, and we will take heed not to forsake that generosity now, not least because we know that extending it to the right people will help us in this war immensely. We will be discerning, and when failing to discern, genuinely contrite. But we will give no quarter to our enemy. We will make him fear: fear that we are onto him, fear that we have turned his neighbors against him, fear that we have made him our agent without his knowing, fear that perhaps this radical Islam thing may be more trouble than it's worth -- or better: fear that, after all, it may be a little off in its apprehension of the duties of man to God.

And make no mistake: this is no mere matter of Free Speech. The Islamist being struck at is generally not the Islamist attempting to exercise his constitution right to free speech; it is rather the Islamist who, having given his allegiance wholly to totalitarian Islam, has acted to systematically conceal this fact. We will not merely abridge his freedom of speech; we will also abridge his freedom of thought.

Now often the way a republic speaks is through legislation, and if legislation is called for, let our politicians find some time in their busy schedules to actually legislate. This is tough stuff: no one said it would be easy. If we must write laws to exclude totalitarian Islam from First Amendment protections under "clear and present danger" precedents, let it be done. If we must write laws to exclude totalitarian Islam from Equal Protection considerations, let it be done. Would such things be delicate business? Indeed it would: among the most delicate we as a people have ever undertaken. But that, friends, is the burden of self-government. And even if legislation along these (admittedly a bit shocking) lines is never enacted -- even if it is never even really considered -- we as a people must face the question I posed above: Are we or are we not going permit the emergence, within our midst, of totalitarian Islam? We must face it and answer, such that most everyone understands, No.


Paul J. Cella III edits the weblog, Cella's Review.

* I know this sort of talk makes many people, even some of my own political allies and friends, very nervous -- heck it makes me nervous. But I will not close this question; will not even pretend that it is a question we infidels can close. The true answer, I fear, is quite indifferent to our nervousness.

Copyright © 2005 Tech Central Station - www.techcentralstation.com

[Corlyss_D]

Is There a Place Called Londonistan?

By Salil Tripathi Published 07/22/2005


LONDON -- Wary and slightly nervous, and yet stoic and phlegmatic, London continued to operate as though nothing much had happened, as another set of "incidents" paralyzed the city-center's transport network yesterday. Fortunately, there were no deaths this time, to add to the 56 who died in coordinated bomb blasts exactly two weeks ago.

Britain has responded the way it has at least partly because an attack on Britain had been widely expected. What wasn't expected was that it would be from within.

There has already been some backlash against Muslims, particularly after it became known that the four suicide bombers of the July 7 attack were British Muslims. Britain is home to 1.6 million Muslims, most of them being law-abiding and hard-working. Muslim preachers have been saying the right things. The imam at Aldgate (the site of one of the 7/7 blasts) called the people responsible for the attacks "criminals".

But a minority of Muslims thinks differently. To understand why Britain-born Muslims, educated in local schools and bred on cricket and fish and chips, became suicide bombers, think of two reasons. One, Britain's Faustian bargain with extremist groups; two, Britain's flawed multicultural model.

The bargain first. For decades, Britain allowed its territory to be used as a refuge by dissidents (Karl Marx was here) and national liberation movements (like the anti-apartheid movement). Many movements found home here, carrying on campaigns, making sure they didn't break British laws.

It became different with some Muslims. Once radical preachers seized control of certain British mosques, they wanted to interfere in British policies. In 1989, they sought a ban on Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses. In the 1990s, some preachers encouraged British Muslims to go and fight in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Afghanistan. And 12 years later, an organization called Al-Muhajiroun openly celebrated 9/11, calling it a victory for Islam. Its leader Omar Bakri Mohammed told the New Statesman last year: "If an Iraqi Muslim carried out an attack in Britain, it would be justified because Britain has carried out terrorism in Iraq."

Later, it was found that French-Moroccan Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker of 9/11 attended London's Finsbury Park Mosque, where the hook-armed cleric, Abu Hamza Al-Masri, called for jihad. Richard Reid, the shoe bomber who tried to blow up a Paris-Miami flight in 2001 was a British Muslim, as was Saajid Badat who pleaded guilty for plotting to use a shoe bomb aboard a trans-Atlantic flight in late 2001. At least 600 British Muslims, mainly of Pakistani origin, joined the Taliban, some fighting British and American forces. British intelligence estimates some one percent of British Muslims may be extremists -- that's 16,000 people. Ahmed Omar Sheikh, who arranged the kidnapping and murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002, was British. In April 2003, two Pakistani-Britons detonated a bomb at a jazz club near the American Embassy in Israel, killing four people. In 2004 British police arrested 12 suspects, many of them British, who were allegedly plotting attacks in Britain and the United States.

Foreign-born preachers and concepts like alienation explain part of the story, as would poor educational performance of Muslims and lack of job opportunities available to them. Unemployment among British Muslims is 10 percentage points above the national average of 5 percent. In the case of 16- to 24-year-old Muslim men, unemployment is 22 percent. But such problems afflict other groups too, and they haven't turned to terror.

Politicians don't miss an opportunity to pander to the radicals. Under the garb of preventing Islamophobia, Britain is enacting legislation to outlaw speech that "incites racial or religious hatred." Can one debate any faith in such circumstances, without the devout crying foul?

Young Muslim girls are under pressure in some parts of Britain to wear the jilbab, an outfit covering the entire body. A British court has permitted such outfits even in publicly-funded schools. (British state schools require uniforms). Such politically-correct moves make it harder for Muslim girls who want to integrate and, yes, wear miniskirts without being insulted or worse by their own.

London's Mayor, Ken Livingstone made a speech worthy of Churchill on July 8. But last year he had invited Egyptian cleric Yousef Al-Qaradawi, who is some sort of an expert about the amount of force to be used to beat up a woman. In his more cheerful moments, he peppers his sermons with dislike for Jews and gays. On Aug 7 he will visit Manchester; and on Aug 14, Swiss author Tariq Ramadan, who the French political scientist Fiammetta Venner calls the Muslim Brotherhood's "charm offensive," and who has been denied entry into the US (like Al-Qaradawi), will be in Nottingham.

This confuses British Muslims. If they want to assimilate with the mainstream, they find that their government is supporting those who want separate uniforms, separate tax codes, separate inheritance laws to permit division of property to more than one wife, and ban on nudity in advertising near mosques.

For decades, Britain performed this delicate dance, allowing extremist Islamic groups to operate, so long as they didn't break British laws. In return it was implicit that Britain would not become a target. European lawmakers called Britain "Londonistan" in quiet exasperation.

7/7 and 7/21 have taught us Britain's bulldog determination; but also the extent to which the two streams -- of extreme preachers from abroad and homegrown Muslims -- have become intermingled.

Separating the two will be a long process.

Mr. Tripathi is a writer based in London, who contributes frequently to the Wall Street Journal, Far Eastern Economic Review, and other publications.

Copyright © 2005 Tech Central Station - www.techcentralstation.com

[Ralph]

One sure thing: no shortage of pundits who seem to know why some young Muslims becoime terrorists.

[MartinPh]

There are three things that are going to have to happen to solve this problem for good:

1. Repressive regimes must be replaced with democratic governments and more liberal economies so that citizens of Muslim countries have other things to occupy themselves with than nutty grievances. Irish terrorism weakened as the Irish economy become more dynamic. Who wanted to bother about whether the British were nasty to great-granny anymore when there was money to be made in High-Tech and the British were good customers?

2. Islam must be pressured into undergoing a reformation. This can happen. Religions have just decided to overlook inconvenient texts and outdated rules and conventions throughout history when the stress or incentives were great enough.

3. Western societies must get over the self-imposed restrictions of Political Correctness and insist on the assimilation of Muslims who are citizens and severely restrict new immigration. Islamic institutions have such strong political features that they should be treated differently than other religious establishments. They are different, and they may be incompatible with free societies as they are currently constituted.

It is exactly this Western arrogance ("you must all become like us") that is feared by fundamentalist Muslims and provides motivation for terrorists. Even if what you say is essentially true, and it probably is, Iraq is one sorry showcase for the fact that you cannot simply turn a country without any democratic tradition into a democracy overnight (or even over the course of decades). Let alone that you can prescribe people what their religion should look like - as Ralph quite rightly said in response to an earlier post of mine, the world is not going to change in that respect. Finally, your notion of Islam seems to be based on the extremists reading of it; but Islam is in fact no more violent or backward a religion than christianity. (And don't tell me that christian religion hasn't got strong political features, especially with this government in power in the US!)

[Haydnseek]

It is exactly this Western arrogance ("you must all become like us") that is feared by fundamentalist Muslims and provides motivation for terrorists.

I’m glad they fear the establishment of democracy and economic freedom in their countries. They should, it will be their undoing. Were talking about basic human rights.

Even if what you say is essentially true, and it probably is, Iraq is one sorry showcase for the fact that you cannot simply turn a country without any democratic tradition into a democracy overnight (or even over the course of decades).

I would say Iraq and Afghanistan are remarkable examples of how much progress can be made in a short time under difficult conditions. I didn’t expect them to have achieved so much so soon. That it will take time to accomplish doesn’t mean it should not be done. You underestimate them; they are humans like us, not another species.

Let alone that you can prescribe people what their religion should look like - as Ralph quite rightly said in response to an earlier post of mine, the world is not going to change in that respect.

Other religions like Christianity have changed when confronted by science, philosophy, humanism, and just the demands of ordinary people for freedom and justice. We are talking about superstitions preserved and cultivated by archaic institutions that need to be confronted and not over-respected.

Finally, your notion of Islam seems to be based on the extremists reading of it; but Islam is in fact no more violent or backward a religion than christianity. (And don't tell me that christian religion hasn't got strong political features, especially with this government in power in the US!)

I think Islam probably is more violent and backward than Christianity is now but once perhaps was not. Over the centuries Christianity has become ever more separated from secular institutions. This was a long and sometimes violent struggle. By political features of Islam I’m not thinking of the involvement of religious believers in political life but the blurring of religious law and authority from the civil. If the radicals have their way there will be no line between them. I doubt whether you would find many, if any, on either side of the church vs state debate in the US who do not support a division between the two. We are arguing about what is acceptable under this division and we are doing it in legislatures and courts as we should.

[Corlyss_D]

I see uour point, but also a problem in trying to control religious practices.
I'm not arguing with you, but where do we draw a line?

The Mormons have a provision obligating their membership to proselytize con tinuously. It's not as violent as the extremist Muslim espansionism - but.....(not to mention the Seventh Day Adventists and many others.)

Perhaps we may see some opinions here by others?

Werner, where did you get the idea that we are obligated to proselytize continously? Or that we are in any way violent either in proselytizing or any other facet of our lives? I'm speechless at this kind of remark from you.

[Corlyss_D]

One sure thing: no shortage of pundits who seem to know why some young Muslims becoime terrorists.

The ones that focus on the lack of assimilation are more likely than not to explain the situation. Europeans are notorious for ghettoizing these guest workers. The fact that these guys are born and bred in England has no impact on whether they have been assimilated. Unemployment of 15-20% among young males in the group is very telling, both in Europe and in their home countries, where umemployment is much higher among that age group.

That European attitude dovetails nicely with another factor. Bat Ye'or in her Eurabia talk that I mentioned some time back claimed that the tactic of the Arab politicos has been to demand special treatment of Arab muslims, to demand special conditions for schools and exceptions for cultural habits that can be attributed to religious origins, like polygamy, veiling of women, etc. So the two trends mesh: the host nations don't want the guest workers to think of themselves as citizens; the guest workers' communities' wise men negotiate with the host government for special treatment that further distinguishes the guest worker community. "And," Ye'or added ominously, "it's always one-way accommodation. The Muslim community never accommodates to the European host nation because they can claim ethnic and religious grounds for the accommodations. Over time, the accommodations become increasingly extortionate and intrusive."

And I would add that reaction to WW2, post-colonialism, and deconstructionism have landed Europe as a cultural entity in a state of virtual suicidal impotence. Cultural dominance is as foreign a notion in Europe as religion is.

[Ralph]

There's something wrong with polygamy or polyandry? News to me.

[Werner]

Corlyss: Your reply is to a post of mine some time ago - and I just saw it.

I did not suggest that Mormon proselytizing includes the violence that characterizes the Muslim fight we're up against. But as some of the other posts pont out, the boundaries between missionary work, fundamentalism and violence are not rock solid. That's why I never mind discussion, but keep far away from activities that have the potential, even the limited potential such as the morder of Dr. Slepian.

And even discussion has its limits. As the many lengtny blog quotation we keep seeing prove, punditry is cheap.

[pizza]

And even discussion has its limits. As the many lengtny blog quotation we keep seeing prove, punditry is cheap.

Substitute "you" for "we" if you want to be accurate. Some of us read them as well as see them.

[Corlyss_D]

the boundaries between missionary work, fundamentalism and violence are not rock solid.

Maybe not among foreigners, but they are among Americans. Eric Rudolph and Randall Terry and the guy who shot Slepian are isolated nut cases from whose activities no conclusions about the faiths they espoused should be drawn, and certainly not about faiths they don't belong to that proselytize and are pro-life. That's worse than guilt by association with the nutcases themselves. That's guilt by virtue simply of belief. It's the same goddam crap we people of faith have to put up with from you secularists all the time. "If you are a believer, you're one step away from murdering people on the streets because you don't have the self-control or the common sense of us secularists to see how dangerous and unworthy belief is."

As the many lengtny blog quotation we keep seeing prove, punditry is cheap.

I don't think anyone here has quoted from a blog. I think we are looking to legitimate published ruminations, trying to sort out what the Brits reactions to this situation is, whether it signals any heightened awareness of the European dilemma generally, and what is likely to happen in the near term.

[pizza]

I don't think anyone here has quoted from a blog. I think we are looking to legitimate published ruminations, trying to sort out what the Brits reactions to this situation is, whether it signals any heightened awareness of the European dilemma generally, and what is likely to happen in the near term.

I've occasionally quoted from blogs. There's nothing less "legitimate" about the contents of well-researched blogs when compared to the nonsense contained in some mainstream publications. It was blogs that first exposed the fake documents produced by Dan Rather and CBS.

[Corlyss_D]

I've occasionally quoted from blogs. There's nothing less "legitimate" about the contents of well-reasoned blogs when compared to the nonsense contained in some mainstream publications. It was blogs that first exposed the fake documents produced by Dan Rather and CBS.

I kinda tend to lump them in with the infoglut on the net. I am very careful about them, especially if I agree with them. I try to stay away from places like Frontpage, Newsmax, even Powerline, unless I use them for background to run down info in the MSM. I do use Realclearpolitics.com, but mostly for his links to polls and a couple of the Iranian expat websites that are clearinghouses for info and not just the ravings of the owner.

[Ralph]

I don't think anyone here has quoted from a blog. I think we are looking to legitimate published ruminations, trying to sort out what the Brits reactions to this situation is, whether it signals any heightened awareness of the European dilemma generally, and what is likely to happen in the near term.

I've occasionally quoted from blogs. There's nothing less "legitimate" about the contents of well-researched blogs when compared to the nonsense contained in some mainstream publications. It was blogs that first exposed the fake documents produced by Dan Rather and CBS.

*****

Some blogs are useful but there's a lot of detritus out there as every Tom, Dick and Harriet uses the medium to vent or espouse.

[Werner]

To our distinguished couselors of the right: Corlyss, you've come up with a terrific term: infoglut. If that's original with you, it should become part of the vocabulary (proper credit going to you, of course.)

And Pizza: you know that occasionally I confound your observation by actually reading one of these efforts at punditry, blog or not. At other times, for the protection of my eyesight - some of which I still need for other uses,- I refer you to Corlyss' ingenious new term.

[Ralph]

To our distinguished couselors of the right: Corlyss, you've come up with a terrific term: infoglut. If that's original with you, it should become part of the vocabulary (proper credit going to you, of course.)

And Pizza: you know that occasionally I confound your observation by actually reading one of these efforts at punditry, blog or not. At other times, for the protection of my eyesight - some of which I still need for other uses,- I refer you to Corlyss' ingenious new term.

*****

"INFOGLUT" is a very common term with thousands of hits on Google.

Infoglut // Information Science
A state of voraciously gathering information, with little or no care for its quality or relevance. Often infoglut develops when an information starved person finds a dense source of information, like the Internet. Closely related to information overload, but more insidious since the victims think they actually profit from it.

C'mon, Werner. The woman can't spell "sarsparilla" correctly and she's going to coin a useful neologism?

[Corlyss_D]

To our distinguished couselors of the right: Corlyss, you've come up with a terrific term: infoglut. If that's original with you, it should become part of the vocabulary (proper credit going to you, of course.)

I'm sure it's not. I've had only one original thought in my life and I forgot what that was.

[Corlyss_D]

The woman can't spell "sarsparilla" correctly and she's going to coin a useful neologism?

You just got thru telling me it wasn't spelled 'r-o-o-t-b-e-e-r'.

[Werner]

Gee, Ralph, another course I missed in ESL class.

[Ralph]

Gee, Ralph, another course I missed in ESL class.

*****

It's never too late...

[MartinPh]

I would say Iraq and Afghanistan are remarkable examples of how much progress can be made in a short time under difficult conditions. I didn’t expect them to have achieved so much so soon. That it will take time to accomplish doesn’t mean it should not be done. You underestimate them; they are humans like us, not another species.

Progress? Are you serious!? Go and ask the people of Iraq, 25,000 deaths on. If they are not another species, but humans like us, we might have asked them their opinion before going in, instead of forcefeeding them our ideals and turning their country into a playground for terrorists.
Even the Bush government is reaching the point where it admits things aren't going quite as smoothly as expected, and that the US military presence in Irag may be a matter of many more years rather than months. Afghanistan and Iraq are warzones, not budding democracies.

Quite apart from the fact, of course, that the invasion of Iraq was never motivated by the noble and altruistic idea of establishing democracy, but by the egoistic idea of protecting the US against Saddam's imaginary WMD.

Other religions like Christianity have changed when confronted by science, philosophy, humanism, and just the demands of ordinary people for freedom and justice. We are talking about superstitions preserved and cultivated by archaic institutions that need to be confronted and not over-respected.

When I hear the present pope, I'm not at all sure Christianity has changed a bit. The religiously motivated debates about gay marriage and abortion, and the continuing discrimination of gays and women in the West confirms that impression. The violence may no longer be physical - that's an improvement; but its roots are still there.

As I said before, no form of organized religion deserves to be overly respected - they are all vestiges of primitive fears.

By political features of Islam I’m not thinking of the involvement of religious believers in political life but the blurring of religious law and authority from the civil. If the radicals have their way there will be no line between them. I doubt whether you would find many, if any, on either side of the church vs state debate in the US who do not support a division between the two. We are arguing about what is acceptable under this division and we are doing it in legislatures and courts as we should.

They may verbally support the division, but that doesn't imply its actually there. When Bush prohibits the use of embryos for scientific research he is not arguing rationally, but religiously, and he is obstructing progress in the treatment of serious diseases on religious grounds. recently, a US supreme court judge openly voiced her disdain for science, preferring her own conservatively christian convictions.
If you are a true believer you will never be able to keep your political actions separate from your beliefs; the separation of church and state will then merely be nominal.

[Barry]

recently, a US supreme court judge openly voiced her disdain for science, preferring her own conservatively christian convictions.

Do you have that quote? I have a difficult time imagining either O'Connor or Ginsburg saying such a thing.

[Ralph]

recently, a US supreme court judge openly voiced her disdain for science, preferring her own conservatively christian convictions.

Do you have that quote? I have a difficult time imagining either O'Connor or Ginsburg saying such a thing.

*****

Wow! How did I miss that when I read every Supreme Court opinion?

And Justice Ginsburg a Christian she ain't.