In the Wapo. I've never liked Rushdie. His writing style is indirect and sometimes opaque. He uses bad logic sometimes and he gets facts wrong frequently. But he is somewhat influential in left-elitist circles. The only thing I like about him is the occasional sarcasm and the fact that he knows Islam's horror up close.
The Right Time for An Islamic Reformation
By Salman Rushdie
When Sir Iqbal Sacranie, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, admitted that "our own children" had perpetrated the July 7 London bombings, it was the first time in my memory that a British Muslim had accepted his community's responsibility for outrages committed by its members.... However, this is the same Sacranie who, in 1989, said that "Death is perhaps too easy" for the author of "The Satanic Verses." ... [Iqbal] expects the new law to outlaw references to Islamic terrorism. He said as recently as Jan. 13, "There is no such thing as an Islamic terrorist. This is deeply offensive. Saying Muslims are terrorists would be covered [i.e., banned] by this provision." Two weeks later his organization boycotted a Holocaust remembrance ceremony in London commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz 60 years ago. If Sir Iqbal Sacranie is the best Blair can offer in the way of a good Muslim, we have a problem....
It should be a matter of intense interest to all Muslims that Islam is the only religion whose origins were recorded historically [this is actually not true - written records contemporaneous with Mohammud's time that verify Islamic history do not exist- the earliest biog is a more than a century after the period in question]
and thus are grounded not in legend but in fact. The Koran was revealed at a time of great change in the Arab world, the seventh-century shift from a matriarchal nomadic culture to an urban patriarchal system....
However, few Muslims have been permitted to study their religious book in this way. The insistence that the Koranic text is the infallible, uncreated word of God renders analytical, scholarly discourse all but impossible. Why would God be influenced by the socioeconomics of seventh-century Arabia, after all? Why would the Messenger's personal circumstances have anything to do with the Message?
The traditionalists' refusal of history plays right into the hands of the literalist Islamofascists, allowing them to imprison Islam in their iron certainties and unchanging absolutes. If, however, the Koran were seen as a historical document, then it would be legitimate to reinterpret it to suit the new conditions of successive new ages. [I don't get the logic here]
Laws made in the seventh century could finally give way to the needs of the 21st. The Islamic Reformation has to begin here, with an acceptance of the concept that all ideas, even sacred ones, must adapt to altered realities.
Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance; open-mindedness is the sibling of peace. This is how to take up the "profound challenge" of the bombers. Will Sir Iqbal Sacranie and his ilk agree that Islam must be modernized? That would make them part of the solution. Otherwise, they're just the "traditional" part of the problem.
#1
"If Sir Iqbal Sacranie is the best Blair can offer in the way of a good Muslim, we have a problem...."
:)
"The traditionalists' refusal of history plays right into the hands of the literalist Islamofascists, allowing them to imprison Islam in their iron certainties and unchanging absolutes. If, however, the Koran were seen as a historical document, then it would be legitimate to reinterpret it to suit the new conditions of successive new ages.
[I don't get the logic here] ..."
I think this is basically the age-old question of whether beings evolve or are static, isn't it? Is life fixed in nature or is it a creation in progress?
if you understand Rushdie's logic then that makes two of you
To me a holy book can have some commandments that are short term and some long term, whether or not history is involved. In all the books of Lev, Num, Deut, Josh, Judges, Samuel & Kings, there was never a 'putting lamb blood on the doorpost' ceremony. This despite a lack of 'historical context' as Rushdie mentions. The commandment was just a one time thing. It would have been relatively easy to say that some of the 'slay them whereever you find them' and similar commandments were only until Mecca was conquered or only until Arabia was conquered or only while the rightly guided caliphs reigned. But Islam just didn't do that.
#3
Same ol' same ol'. He's trotting out the traditional lefty attack on historical precedent. E.g. this might look more familiar:
"The strict constructionalists' refusal of history plays right into the hands of the literalist Republicans, allowing them to imprison the United States in their iron certainties and unchanging absolutes. If, however, the U.S. Constitution were seen as a historical document, then it would be legitimate to reinterpret it to suit the new conditions of successive new ages.
On the other hand when confronted with a movement of contemporary imperialism - Islamism wants an empire from the Philippines to Gibraltar - and which is tyrannical, homophobic, misogynist, racist and homicidal to boot, they [the left] feel it is valid because it is against Western culture. It expresses its feelings in a regrettably brutal manner perhaps, but that can't hide its authenticity.
The result of this inversion of principles has been that liberals can't form alliances with the victims of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan or Iraq any more than the Auden generation could form alliances with the victims of Stalinism.
This isn't simply about international relations. Who is going to help the victims of religious intolerance in Britain's immigrant communities? Not the Liberal Democrats, who have never once offered support to liberal and democrats in Iraq. Nor an anti-war left which prefers to embrace a Muslim Association of Britain and Yusuf al-Qaradawi who believe that Muslims who freely decide to change their religion or renounce religion should be executed. If the Archbishop of Canterbury were to suggest the same treatment for renegade Christians all hell would break loose. But as the bigotry comes from 'the other' there is silence.
Perhaps it will break soon. There always was far more disquiet on the left at this 'rightwards lurch' than the Guardian or Radio 4 admitted. If my emails are a guide, the London bombs have added a practical reason for breaking with the consensus: now they're trying to kill us. Even if people think that the Iraq war has made Britain a bigger target, they are still confronted with a fascistic cult of murder and self-murder which allows no compromise.
The thing to watch for with fellow travellers is what shocks them into pulling the emergency cord and jumping off the train. I know some will stay on to the terminus, and when the man with the rucksack explodes his bomb their dying words will be: 'It's not your fault. I blame Tony Blair.'
My advice to my former comrades is to struggle out of your straitjackets and get off at the next station. It would be good to see you on this side of the barrier.
#1
"The result of this inversion of principles has been that liberals can't form alliances with the victims of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan or Iraq"
Talk about nail on the head. This is dead center. IMO, this describes a Leftist to the micron.
This just has me steaming. Just because the Leftist's can't find friends on the Right, they make friends with the enemy. All the more reason that there must be a total political defeat of the Left.
#2
This just has me steaming. Just because the Leftist's can't find friends on the Right
I think you mean "won't find friends on the Right". For most on the left of the spectrum, there's infinitely more in common between them and your average Republican. Heck, the number of religious conservatives who really want anything resembling a "theocracy" is small -- and almost all REJECTED from the conservative mainstream. Yet the left takes comfort when a for-real "stone the queers, keep the women in the home, pregnant and covered from head to toe" theocrat mouths their talking points.
Unfortunately, the left has internalized a great deal of what had been Soviet propaganda. For them to consider the possibility that the US isn't the villain would require questioning a great deal of their core beliefs, and doing that puts them at too high a risk of one of them coming up with the wrong answers and not being leftists anymore.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
08/07/2005 19:36 Comments ||
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Oh, sure, you can scoff. But evidently the system's already being test-piloted in Howard Dean's Democratic Party. That's why the Dems' Congressional Campaign Committee hailed their electoral failure in last week's Ohio special election as a triumphant "deferred success." As their press release put it:
"In nearly the biggest political upset in recent history, Democrat Paul Hackett came within just a few thousand votes of defeating Republican Jean Schmidt in Ohio's Second Congressional District."
Yes, indeed. It was "nearly the biggest political upset in recent history," which is another way of saying it was actually the smallest political non-upset in recent history. Hackett was like a fast-forward rerun of the Kerry campaign. He was a veteran of the Iraq war, but he was anti-war, but he made solemn dignified patriotic commercials featuring respectful footage of President Bush and artfully neglecting to mention the candidate was a Democrat, but in livelier campaign venues he dismissed Bush as a "sonofabitch" and a "chicken hawk" who was "un-American" for questioning his patriotism.
And as usual this nearly winning strategy lost yet again -- this time to a weak Republican candidate with a lot of problematic baggage. Insofar as I understand it, the official Democratic narrative is that Bush is a moron who's nevertheless managed to steal two elections. Big deal. Up against this crowd, that's looking like petty larceny. After the Ohio vote, Dem pollster Stan Greenberg declared that "one of the biggest doubts about Democrats is that they don't stand for anything." That might have passed muster two years ago. Alas, the party's real problem is that increasingly there's no doubt whatsoever about it.
Fortunately, the Dems have found a new line of attack to counter the evil election-stealing moron. A few days ago, the Democratic National Committee put out a press release attacking Bush for being physically fit. It seems his physical fitness comes at the expense of the nation's lardbutt youth. Or as the DNC put it:
"While President Bush has made physical fitness a personal priority, his cuts to education funding have forced schools to roll back physical education classes and his administration's efforts to undermine Title IX sports programs have threatened thousands of women's college sports programs."
Wow. I noticed my gal had put on a few pounds but I had no idea it was Bush's fault. That sonofabitch chicken hawk. Just for the record, "his cuts to education funding" are cuts only in the sense that Hackett's performance in the Ohio election was a tremendous victory: that's to say, Bush's "cuts to education funding" are in fact an increase of roughly 50 percent in federal education funding.
Some of us wish he had cut education funding. By any rational measure, a good third of public school expenditures are completely wasted. But instead it's skyrocketed. And the idea that Bush is heartlessly pursuing an elite leisure activity denied to millions of American schoolchildren takes a bit of swallowing given that his preferred fitness activity is running. "Running" requires two things: you and ground. Short of buying every schoolkid some John Kerry thousand-dollar electric-yellow buttock-hugging lycra singlet, it's hard to see what there is about "running" that requires increasing federal funding.
Perhaps America could have a Running Czar or a National Commission on Running that would report back on the need for a Cabinet-level Runner-General. Perhaps Title IX needs to be expanded to provide a federal sneaker subsidy: a woman's right to shoes.
But I don't think so. Sitting behind yet another Vermont granolamobile bearing the bumper sticker "Bush Scares Me," I found myself thinking that perhaps the easiest way to reduce childhood obesity in American families might just to be to shout out, "Look! There's big scary Bush! Run! Run for your lives! No, wait, there's John Bolton, too! Better cut through the park before he puts his hands on his hips in an aggressive manner!" Indeed, when yesterday's coming man John Edwards dusts off his "Two Americas" stump speech -- the one with the heartwarming Dickensian vignette about the shivering girl whose parents can't afford to buy her a winter coat ($9.99 brand new from Wal-Mart) -- he might want to add a section about how an easy way for shivering coatless girls to keep warm is to run around the block a couple of times.
Speaking of shivering coatless girls in Bush's America, spare a thought for the underprivileged urchins of the Bronx. The Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club, a nonprofit social-services organization in New York, receives millions of dollars in government funds to give disadvantaged youth in poor neighborhoods a leg up the ladder of life. But mysteriously much of the money wound up being diverted to the coffers of Air America, the liberal talk-radio network whose ratings are yet another example of "deferred success." The needs of disadvantaged Al Franken and his pals apparently outweigh those of Bronx welfare recipients. Perhaps Janeane Garofalo is the coatless girl John Edwards was talking about all those months. Air America looks like the broadcast version of the U.N. Oil-for-Food program, whereby money earmarked to save starving moppets somehow winds up in the bank accounts of bloated self-described do-gooders with political connections.
The DNC's Bush-is-the-reason-your-kid-is-fat press release is a convenient precis of the party's problem: While he runs rings around them, the Dems lounge about getting flabbier by the week and telling themselves it's all his fault they can barely move except to complain about Bush's Supreme Court nominee's kid being overly cute. What's the betting for 2006? The Dems will have a few more "nearly the biggest political upsets," while the Republicans will have the actual political upsets -- a couple more Senate seats? Including Robert C. Byrd's venerable perch in West Virginia?
Republicans may see the increasingly arthritic, corpulent, wheezing, flatulent Democratic Party as a boon for them, but I don't. Two-party systems need two parties, not just for the health of the loser but for that of the winner, too. Intellectually, philosophically, legislatively, it's hard to maintain the discipline to keep yourself in shape when the other guy just lies around the house all day.
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/07/2005 13:48 ||
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"Two-party systems need two parties, not just for the health of the loser but for that of the winner, too."
Man!! Everything is social, social, social with these people. Research doesn't show that when the Demons were in power, that there was "a spirit of cooperation" with the Right. Whatabunchof Hypocrites!!
#4
hypocrites is too kind. Ideological thieves is more accurate
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/07/2005 17:39 Comments ||
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#5
I am reminded when the republican party about hit bottom, around 1964. It seemed like their entire leadership were embracing things like "Impeach Earl Warren", the John Birch Society, the anti-flouridation league. Goldwater looked moderate to liberal to them. While the radicals owned the party apparatus, the moderates quietly began making friends with democrat conservatives. Finally, Nixon came forth and swamped the ultra conservatives, and broke their power for good.
#8
SPOD, help is on the way. They are trying to get the redistricting plan back on the ballot and if they do the Dems will be heading for the hills (or many Oregon). Yes things look dark now, but I am hopeful. BTW I loved this article, hit on all th right notes and heres to hoping for a bunch of close loses for the DNC in 2006.
#9
Not just CA SPOD, many states are experiencing a fairly decisive split beween moderate Republicans and the far right with the effect of boosting otherwise weak Democrats. E.g., my home state which should be a conservative bastion by any measure (Bush won in '04 by 25 points and carried over 98% of all counties) recently elected a Democratic governor.
Trouble there is that the far right has taken control of the local party apparatus and has only 2 litmus tests for their candidates, they must: 1. be absolutely opposed to all abortion and be willing to do whatever they can to impede the ability of anyone to have or perform abortions, and 2. work to replace the teaching of evolution with creation in schools. The net result is that staggerinly unqualified candidates (e.g., the last Republican candidate for governor who handed the win to the Dems, or the recently elected Republican attorney general whose law license has been suspended by the state bar for many years) end up on the Republican ticket.
I'm not so sure that our enjoyment of the Donks' suffering at the hands of their radical wing isn't premature. To me, current politics looks a lot like a race to the bottom with the religious right and the moonbat left both racing to destroy their respective parties. I'm not at all certain which of them is going to succeed first.
Today's NY Times carries an article asking where all the heroes are from the Iraqi War.
Well, from August 71-14, they'll be at my blog. I've been maintaining a web site called AMERICAN HEROES for some time, highlighting the America's heroes in the War on Terror. All this week I'll be posting some of these stories on my blog, along with others that I haven't added to the site yet.
Read about Rick Rescorla, hero of Vietnam, and hero again as he saved thousands of his co-workers during the horrific events of 9/11. And he sang, doing it.
Read about Mark Mitchell. He borrowed a turban to scale a prison wall to rescure a CIA officer in Afghanistan.
Teresa Broadwell is a small woman. But standing on tip toe, she managed to use her weapon to hold off an ambush until help arrived.
Leigh Ann Hester, manager of a small shoe store, charged entrenched enemy with her squad leader, and the two of them killed or routed a determined enemy.
Unfortunately, far too many of these stories exist only in military press releases. This week I hope to show as many people as I can what heroes we have defending us.
#1
Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester of the 617th Military Police Company, a National Guard unit out of Richmond, Ky., received the Silver Star, along with two other members of her unit, Staff Sgt. Timothy Nein and Spc. Jason Mike, for their actions during an enemy ambush on their convoy. Other members of the unit also received awards.
Hester's squad was shadowing a supply convoy March 20 when anti-Iraqi fighters ambushed the convoy. The squad moved to the side of the road, flanking the insurgents and cutting off their escape route. Hester led her team through the "kill zone" and into a flanking position, where she assaulted a trench line with grenades and M203 grenade-launcher rounds. She and Nein, her squad leader, then cleared two trenches, at which time she killed three insurgents with her rifle.
When the fight was over, 27 insurgents were dead, six were wounded, and one was captured.
Hester, 23, who was born in Bowling Green, Ky., and later moved to Nashville, Tenn., said she was surprised when she heard she was being considered for the Silver Star.
"I'm honored to even be considered, much less awarded, the medal," she said.
Being the first woman soldier since World War II to receive the medal is significant to Hester. But, she said, she doesn't dwell on the fact. "It really doesn't have anything to do with being a female," she said. "It's about the duties I performed that day as a soldier."
Yes, Sergeant... You kicked some serious butt...
Thanks!
But the reason that Pakistan has become a safety net for individual cells as well as organised, regimented movements like the Taleban has deeper roots. The Sunday Times reported on 24 July that villagers in Chak 477 in Punjab, Pakistan â where the suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweerâs family emigrated from â held a heroâs funeral for him despite the absence of his body, and chanted slogans like âTanweer, the hero of Islamâ. Among the mourners were members of a banned organisation, Jaish-e-Muhammad, which normally reserves its havoc for India. The ideology of such villages was not created by Afghanistan.
Osama is in Pakistan because of this parallel ideology; the ideology is not there because of him.
Posted by: john ||
08/07/2005 09:46 ||
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#1
Fascinating.
It is often claimed that Jinnah was secular but the call to Jihad predates the creation of Pakistan itself.
By 1940 Jinnah knew what he wanted â Pakistan. What was debatable was why. The slogan that divided India was simple: âIslam is in danger.â As a proposition, it was absurd. For the believer a faith is true precisely because it is imperishable. A Muslim can be in danger, but not Islam. However, if Muslims were in danger from Hindus, then they needed security and safeguards in those regions where they were in a minority, like central India. Instead Pakistan was created on the western and eastern flanks of the subcontinent, where Muslims were in a majority and if anything the Hindus were in danger.
The logic for the creation of Pakistan had, therefore, to be blown up from saving Muslims to saving Islam. The âdefence of Islamâ needed a fortress and Pakistan became that fortress. Ironically, the religiosity of Gandhi helped sustain Muslim League suspicions. Gandhi fantasised about a âRama Rajyaâ in united India, a dream kingdom of the Hindu warrior-god Rama, where every citizen had equal rights and so on and so forth. Jinnah argued that this was just a deceptive term for the Hindu rule that he feared. The demand for Pakistan was accompanied by the rhetoric of a simulated jihad. A jihad is valid if Muslims are denied the right to practise their faith, or against the invasion of a Muslimâs homeland. And so Muslims were warned that in post-British India mosques would be destroyed and the call to prayer forbidden, and they must resort to violence if necessary to protect their separateness. A typical pamphlet, circulated after the Muslim League announced a âDirect Action Dayâ on 16 August 1946, said, âThe Bombay resolution of the All-India Muslim League has been broadcast. The call to revolt comes to us from a nation of heroes ...The day for an open fight which is the greatest desire of the Muslim nation has arrived. Come, those who want to rise to heaven. Come, those who are simple, wanting in peace of mind and who are in distress. Those who are thieves, goondas (thugs), those without the strength of character and those who do not say their prayers â all come. The shining gates of Heaven have been opened for you. Let us enter in thousands. Let us all cry out victory to Pakistan.â
Posted by: john ||
08/07/2005 11:16 Comments ||
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According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the rate of family violence in this country has dropped by more than half since 1993. I've been trying to figure out why.
A lot of the credit has to go to the people who have been quietly working in this field: to social workers who provide victims with counseling and support; to women's crisis centers, which help women trapped in violent relationships find other places to live; to police forces and prosecutors, who are arresting more spouse-beaters and putting them away.
The Violence Against Women Act, which was passed in 1994, must have also played a role, focusing federal money and attention.
But all of these efforts are part of a larger story. The decline in family violence is part of a whole web of positive, mutually reinforcing social trends. To put it in old-fashioned terms, America is becoming more virtuous. Americans today hurt each other less than they did 13 years ago. They are more likely to resist selfish and shortsighted impulses. They are leading more responsible, more organized lives. A result is an improvement in social order across a range of behaviors.
The decline in domestic violence is of a piece with the decline in violent crime over all. Violent crime over all is down by 55 percent since 1993 and violence by teenagers has dropped an astonishing 71 percent, according to the Department of Justice.
The number of drunken driving fatalities has declined by 38 percent since 1982, according to the Department of Transportation, even though the number of vehicle miles traveled is up 81 percent. The total consumption of hard liquor by Americans over that time has declined by over 30 percent.
Teenage pregnancy has declined by 28 percent since its peak in 1990. Teenage births are down significantly and, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the number of abortions performed in the country has also been declining since the early 1990's.
Fewer children are living in poverty, even allowing for an uptick during the last recession. There's even evidence that divorce rates are declining, albeit at a much more gradual pace. People with college degrees are seeing a sharp decline in divorce, especially if they were born after 1955.
I could go on. Teenage suicide is down. Elementary school test scores are rising (a sign than more kids are living in homes conducive to learning). Teenagers are losing their virginity later in life and having fewer sex partners. In short, many of the indicators of social breakdown, which shot upward in the late 1960's and 1970's, and which plateaued at high levels in the 1980's, have been declining since the early 1990's.
I always thought it would be dramatic to live through a moral revival. Great leaders would emerge. There would be important books, speeches, marches and crusades. We're in the middle of a moral revival now, and there has been very little of that. This revival has been a bottom-up, prosaic, un-self-conscious one, led by normal parents, normal neighbors and normal community activists.
The first thing that has happened is that people have stopped believing in stupid ideas: that the traditional family is obsolete, that drugs are liberating, that it is every adolescent's social duty to be a rebel.
The second thing that has happened is that many Americans have become better parents. Time diary studies reveal that parents now spend more time actively engaged with kids, even though both parents are more likely to work outside the home.
Third, many people in the younger generation, under age 30 or so, are reacting against the culture of divorce. They are trying to lead lives that are more stable than the ones their parents led. Post-boomers behave better than the baby boomers did.
Fourth, over the past few decades, neighborhood and charitable groups have emerged to help people lead more organized lives, even in the absence of cohesive families.
Obviously, we're not living in a utopia, where all social problems have been solved. But these improvements across a whole range of behaviors are too significant to be dismissed. We in the media play up the negative, as we always do. The activist groups emphasize the work still to be done, because they want to keep people mobilized and financing their work.
But the good news is out there. You want to know what a society looks like when it is in the middle of moral self-repair? Look around.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/07/2005 01:09 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
